For all of us who are wine collectors, who already have to deal with buying wine, storing/cellaring wine and perhaps selling wine on occasion, I think it’s easy to reach the conclusion that if we were going to “invest” in wine, and could secure an adequate supply of the appropriate wines to do that, we would handle everything ourselves. We understand the costs, the logistical issues, and even know which wines are the appropriate investment candidates and which are not (i.e. it’s not just buying first growth bordeaux or DRC but knowing which wines to buy in which vintages and which wines to avoid.) We have the needed knowledge and tools to be able to “invest” in wine, if that’s what we want to do.
But this type of wine investment scam is not attracting knowledgeable wine collectors. Instead they are targeted at people who have little knowledge about wine but who really want to believe those stories they have heard about ridiculously high levels of return on “wine investments.” Most of all, they want to believe that they can find a “one-stop” entity that will do everything for them: (i) know exactly which wine to purchase; (ii) know what to pay for it and where to buy it; (iii) have the personnel and storage space to handle the buying, selling and proper storage of the wine; and, (iv) most importantly, they will sell all of this knowledge and perform all of these services for virtually nothing.
This whole scam should fall apart the second that the prospective investor hears that the Charles-Winn is going to sell its knowledge and perform all of these services for 10% of the profits obtained — not even 10% of the gross purchase price. How stupid do you have to be in order to believe that? If someone theoretically had both the skills and access to the right wines be able to earn a 15% annualized returns on wine investments from whatever money was provided, why would they ever offer those services for 10% of the profits obtained, in effect an amount equal to a 1.5% annualized return in my example.
The best return on a wine investment is not financial but psychic, enjoying with friends and family. We are taking our niece and her boyfriend this weekend to dinner, to open 1989 Montrose and Leoville Las Cases, plus some 1990 Loire white and 1994 Napa red.
So a good friend sent me this picture of a 2000 La Tache that was gifted to him. He was thinking of selling it to raise money for charity and he asked what I thought its value would be. My initial reaction looking at the bottle was that there were several things not right. Particularly the neck label. Seems wrong on numerous levels. Anyone else wish to weigh in? Looks like the wrong shape, the word MONOPOLE is straight. The paper seems wrong as it is way glossier than the main label and there appears to be text alignment issues.
The wine was very complex and elegant, and gently retreated and exited often from its tannin shell, indicating to be nowhere near full maturity. The fruit was full but not overtly sweet, with layers of smoke, minerality, and spice.
As you state, the neck label does not appear to be correct. First, the neck label is too large – compare the alignment of the left edge of the neck label on your friend’s bottle with the bottle from Bonhams below. The left edge of the neck label on your friend’s bottle aligns with the text on the main label below it well into the L on the large LA TACHE on the main label vs. in the A on La Tache. The neck label is also incorrectly shaped – it’s pretty flat as opposed to crescent shaped. As you correctly state, the MONOPOLE print is quite flat instead of printed on a curve. Also, the neck label appears to have been hand cut – note the top left half inch of the label on your friend’s bottle.
If you have a photo that includes the capsule please send it to me. It would also be helpful to know exactly where this bottle came from.
Here are two examples from Sotheby’s (Oct. 3, 2020) and Bonhams (June 14, 2019)
I know pretty near nothing about DRC, but seems like everyone counterfeiting it fails at the neck label and goes on from there. It’s not hard to see that there’s a curve to the top edge on the real ones, and “Monopole” also has a slight curve to it.
more on the Monopole label—the real bottle appears to have a braid inside the black line that goes around the label whereas the suspect bottle has just a straight line. Don’t know if that’s really the case w authentic bottles—will look at one soon.
Anyone else talk to Elsa from the French documentary team for Disney+?
She mentioned it was going to be a four part series shooting here (USA)
In June and September.
No contact. I suspect that they are just looking for photos of Rudy to use for yet another French version of the story about the French hero, Laurent Ponsot. That particular documentary (Sour Grapes) has already been done.
she asked about the 2002 HdR auction where I had photographed RK. She did not know who Manfred K was and I explained that he was the SQN winemaker etc…
