Lyle, there is a man in jail and millions upon millions of Rudy wines out there. It is a very serious matter with far reaching consequences.
Nate Rose
That’s why its important to get your facts straight before assassinating a man’s character, potentially ruining his career, and much worse. But hey, whatever floats your boat. Keep on keeping on.
And what’s worse is the speculation, which as we all know sometimes is the worst.
Like calling someone a pedophile or racist and then it is proven they are not. The label sticks.
So keep doing this. You’re fighting the good fight in a public forum.
Jim I do not understand the hesitantly in a social setting to offer an acquaintance/friend advice on fraudulent wines. I, for one, would at a minimum not participate in drinking wine which I knew (or should know) to be an illegal counterfeit. But that is me.
This very topic has come up before, I think even upthread. Let’s say you’re at a tasting or wine dinner and someone graciously brings a very expensive and/or rare wine. You look at the bottle, and at the very least you question the authenticity of the bottle. What “should” your reaction be, esp. if you haven’t been asked your opinion?
It’s a very difficult situation socially, and one that isn’t easy to finesse.
Bruce
After the story broke I went back and looked at my old DRC notes to see if there were any candidates. Here are two that seem in retrospect pretty likely to be Rudy concoctions.
- 1993 Domaine de la Romanée-Conti Grands-Echezeaux - France, Burgundy, Côte de Nuits, Grands-Echezeaux Grand Cru (8/11/2009)
I remember the Echezeaux of this vintage having a slightly green, stalky acidity to it – none of that here, which is ripe enough to border on flavors of sur-maturite with its slight sucking-candy flavor and obvious glycerine fattening up the palate. Like the '88 Ech today this definitely exhibits a late-harvest style but the proportions here are a little more streamlined and the flavor darker and deeper. (88 pts.) - 1988 Domaine de la Romanée-Conti Echezeaux - France, Burgundy, Côte de Nuits, Echezeaux Grand Cru (8/11/2009)
Definitely shows a late-harvest character with its fat, glossy, even slightly candied fruit. Not sure I’ve ever had an '88 so ripe, and it tastes too ripe. It turns more interesting and savory on the finish, but without the DRC label this probably isn’t a wine I’d feel compelled to come back to. (86 pts.)
Posted from CellarTracker
If I were a self proclaimed wine expert, a self proclaimed wine authenticating expert and I was dealing with a 5 or 10 thousand dollar bottle of wine who the owner claimed had been authenticated by the chateau owner, my response might be different than yours or mine.
PS.
The buck has to stop somewhere on identifying and taking counterfeit bottles off the market. I suppose if one was to drink the juice it is off the market. What if the night drew late and this obviously counterfeit bottle was still unopened. Wouldn’t there be a chance that the bottle could flipped to yet another victim? What about dealing with the seller of the counterfeit bottle (auction house or otherwise). At som point someone has to do the right thing.
Post deleted by Ian - see quotes below if interested in what it contained.
It is not Nate’s comments that are destroying Mike’s character, but Mike’s own words. That is the risk in using social media.
Unless there are any facts that you believe aren’t straight? Perhaps you believe the bottle was genuine?
regards
Ian
Many years ago I was invited to a tasting of mature high-end Bordeaux to which I arrived about a half an hour later than everyone else. I was friends with the host, and at least peripherally acquainted with the others in attendance, and as I came to the table the host handed me a glass of red that was completely oxidized. I immediately said something about it being a dead solider, or something like that.
It turned out that the person who contributed the bottle in question to the tasting, a mid-70s Margaux (a terrible time for the estate), had been waxing rather poetic about the perfumed qualities of this exalted growth, and this bottle in particular, and was not happy to hear someone say the wine was DOA. Had I known what he had been saying before I arrived, I might have tried to finesse the situation a little more, but I also suspect the host was using me to get to the other, thankfully much better wines.
Point being that the wine world is full of major egos about whose palate is best and who’s the smartest and knows the most, and as we can see from Mr. Madrigale’s reaction, the likelihood of someone being a good sport about being fooled is not high. I’m also thinking of the Lettie Teague story where she switched wines on someone, and how mad it made him because he didn’t notice.
Pretty sure bill is just joking.
Oops! I forgot to use the “THIS IS A JOKE” smiley, Ian. No bet with Mr. Madrigale…
Keith,
Were these ‘The Cellar’ wines?
“And a man in my position can’t afford to look re-dic-er-lus”
Jack Woltz in The Godfather.
Absolutely! Lyle, your posts on this are ridiculous. It’s as if you haven’t read the thread and linked social media page. You are not making sense at all.
Thanks for the informative post, Don.
Aside from the glass color which Leo pointed out, I also see lines in the glass (possibly created by a mold?) on the bottles in the photo from the Christies/fakes and no visible lines on the Majestic/real bottles.
I can’t say we are friends, but I also know Mike from being in the ITB community and he is a very passionate and dedicated wine professional and I don’t think that this incident changes any of that or impacts an evaluation of his personal character in any way. It’s unfortunate, however, that he misjudged this bottle and then tried to defend his position by cutting on the doubters rather than trying to get facts on its provenance. With all the issues surrounding fake older bottles these days I think any professional should always cast a skeptical eye on them when they’re presented unless the provenance is known completely, and folks who do handle these bottles obviously need to step up their game when it comes to identifying real wines vs. fakes.
I wish it had happened under different circumstances but Nate, thanks for coming on and adding to the discussion.
Last but not least, if you can bat .400 in blind tastings that’s usually doing pretty well. So to think that you can definitively identify a fake wine as such simply by tasting is unrealistic, especially in a situation where you’re at a dinner tasting through a dozen wines or more.
Jim, that was six years ago and they were shared at an offline with a big group. No clue where they came from. Can’t even remember who brought them.
Thanks Keith. I’m trying to dig up my notes on a couple of very old wines from that auction. I have the empties still. I’ll try to post label pics over the weekend.
My question is this— in that those that create fake labels (not just refilling and recapsuling) are using inkjet or laser printers, and not setting up entire offset litho or rotogravure presses for the label printing, doesn’t examination via loupe provide a dead giveaway per this image?
I quickly checked a dozen random bottles, and all are printed offset. Even those that appear as one-color black on white labels are printed CMYK offset.
(offset left/inkjet-laser right)
Very interesting.
A friend and I went in on three bottles of 82 Gaja at an Acker auction in the time Rudy was selling stuff. The wine certainly tasted like nebbiolo, but showed no evolution or secondary aromas at all. If I’d been served them blindly, I’d have guessed a 1996 Barolo or Barbaresco (and we were drinking them circa 2007 or 2008).
When the news of Rudy broke, I couldn’t help wondering if these were fakes. Nothing wrong with the wines. Just a little too young.
John:
I’m assuming that you are referring to the fact that the note in the catalog states that two of the capsules were cut prior to inspection by Christie’s. There were many consignments by Rudy or Antonio Castanos for which this occurred. When I first saw this several years ago, my first thought was that the bottles had been offered to another auction house or private buyer, who had insisted on cutting some capsules, and after looking at the corks, had rejected the bottles. That could very well be explanatory in some cases.
But after seeing several of these, it also occurred to me that there might be another explanation.
We know that Rudy had difficulty in obtaining the correct capsules for DRC wines (and others), particularly the DRC vineyard designated capsules that started with the 1976 vintage. (From 1976 onward, you couldn’t twist off the capsule on an Echezeaux and place it on a bottle of counterfeit Romanee Conti. To get a vineyard designated capsule for Romanee Conti you either had to have one made, as the latest European and Asian counterfeiters are doing, or you had to remove a vineyard-designated capsule from a Romanee-Conti from an “off” vintage – and that was definitely going to be more costly.) To solve the capsule shortage, a number of Rudy fakes have “Mise Du Domaine” capsules that should have the vineyard-designated capsules (e.g. several of the 1978 DRC fakes Rudy sold, including the bottles sold by Marc Lazar shown in the photos in the most recent post about his sales.) Many people, including those with lots of experience with DRC, just didn’t notice the capsules because it is just ingrained in your head that the Mise Du Domaine capsules properly belong on the DRC wines. It looks like at the time that this particular batch of fakes was produced, for the December 2010 Christie’s auction, Rudy was even short on Mise Du Domaine capsules and he used old Leroy SA capsules instead.
It is also a bit of a feat to twist the capsule off of a bottle well enough so that the capsule remains intact and in a condition so that it can be applied to another bottle. If you remember the photographs published by the Justice Department at the time Rudy was arrested, he had a large wastebasket full of them in his “office” at his home. The government presented some bags full of them at the trial too.
Even when you can manage to twist off the capsule intact, when you put it on the second bottle in its stretched condition, you’re going to get wrinkles, etc, which many Rudy bottles have.
When you are twisting off lead capsules in the hope of reusing them, you’re going to end up with some that start to tear and some that just won’t twist because of seepage. One of the things that the counterfeiter can do is to T-cut those capsules, remove the capsule, add a drop of glue to the top of the capsule (or not), and then apply it to the fake bottle as though it’s been there all along and was cut for the purposes of permitting inspection of the cork. You can also cut off the bottom of the capsule and remove the upper portion. I think that explains a lot of the pre-cut capsules and short cut-off capsules that appear on a lot of Rudy fakes.