Mark:
The wines sold for the following prices (including the 23% buyer premium):
1870 Mouton $13,530.00
1874 Mouton $14,760.00
1945 Lafite $3,936.00
1949 VCC $2,152.50
Well, as long as you drink the label instead of the wine, nothing to worry about!
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I would guess that this is exactly what 99% of those that buy or drink those wines do. That includes the willing enablers of both Hardy Rodenstock and Rudy.
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For some, they don’t even have to drink it. The satisfaction is in the ownership. With ancient bottles, there’s a significant risk that drinking them will burst the bubble when they turn out to be dead as a doornail. Especially those that have been around the block a few times,
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I don’t think that number is close. There are certainly some who feel that just producing a bottle with a trophy label is enough, but I suspect most buyers are not interested in problem bottles, especially if they open them with people who have read this thread.
I wonder if that’s what happened here. Are the prices realized reflective of what bottles with perfect provenance sell for?
There is much about this auction, and the behavior of Heritage Auction in connection with this auction, that I find very disturbing.
When I see auction offerings with significant authenticity issues, my custom and practice has always been to contact the auction house directly and privately to point out the problem. Generally, I either seek to obtain further information from the auction house to help confirm the wine’s authenticity, or suggest further effort to verify authenticity, or suggest an appropriate correction in the lot description is needed. Sometimes the problems are significant enough to suggest that bottle does not meet the appropriate standards to be sold at auction as described and needs to be withdrawn. I only end up issuing warning posts here when that process fails.
Here, the private communication process failed. To summarize:
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Three bottles from 1870 to 1945 were claimed to have been “reconditioned by chateau” with no supporting evidence – despite repeated requests to Heritage for disclosure of such evidence if it existed.
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Heritage failed and refused to cut capsules on the three oldest wines in order to examine the corks to verify the claims of rebouchage by the chateaus and the existence of proper vintage-dated chateau corks.
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Heritage failed and refused to address (or to verify the existence of) the apparent lack of a rebouchage back label on the 1945 Lafite Rothschild, which should be there if the bottle was reconditioned by the chateau as claimed.
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The only evidence that the bottles had been recorked at all was that the capsules on the bottles were not original-issue capsules.
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As pointed out here, but which was apparently undetected by Heritage, the capsule on the 1874 Mouton Rothschild, which sold for $14,760.00, was clearly not a capsule from Mouton Rothschild. So, less than 24 hours before the auction closed, the description of the wine was changed on the website from “reconditioned by chateau” to “reconditioned by Whitwhams.” (The bottle had an importer strip indicating it had been acquired from Whitwhams). This was nothing more than a supposition to try to explain the inconsistency between the non-chateau capsule and the claim that the bottle had been been “reconditioned by chateau.”
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The consignor, who posted here, the former President of a wine importer in Dallas, offered no evidence to confirm that any of the bottles had ever been reconditioned by the chateau. Instead, he simply stated that the bottles were essentially as he received them following his father’s death in 2003.
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The 1949 Vieux Chateau Certan was sold despite a significant question about its authenticity. I first contacted Heritage on August 13 to obtain high resolution photos of five lots, including the four described in my post (the photos were not then posted on the website) and to ask about the evidence that the three bottles described above had been “reconditioned by chateau.” I received a response from Heritage Wine Department director Frank Martell the following day stating in part: “We sent photos to the chateaux for authentication of course and we are still waiting on the ultimate green light, but the chain of custody is sound.” After forwarding a large number of photos of Vieux Chateau Certain from 1942 to 1961 to Mr. Martell (most of which came from two chateau-hosted vertical tastings), I ended up contacting the chateau myself. As reported above, Alexandre Thienpont, the director of the chateau, stated that he had never seen a bottle having both Récolte and 1949 on the same line and recommended prospective purchasers "not to bid on this lot.” So, here the implicit claim that Heritage would rely upon any opinion that they received from the respective chateau about authenticity has proven to be false.
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With respect to the 1945 Chateau Lafite, I ended up sending to Heritage a copy of the Washington Post article and two other published articles describing the details of the Chateau Lafite recorking process and a series of photos from the contemporaneous time period showing the rebouchage back labels applied by the chateau when it engaged in recorking wines. I asked repeatedly whether there was any evidence of such a rebouchage label on the bottle offered by Heritage – and received no response. On August 18 I wrote an email to Mr. Martell stating in pertinent part: “Please answer my question rather than play the avoidance game. Does the bottle of 1945 Lafite have the back label regarding Rebouchage? If not, it is presumptively counterfeit (refill). [¶] If I don’t hear from you promptly, you will leave me no choice but to post a warning about these bottles.” In response, I received an email from Mr. Martell the same day which failed to address the question and stated among other things that: “this is not going to be a dialog” and that “Mr. Ivy, our C.E.O. has asked me to inform you in the strongest terms possible that we will turn this matter over to our attorneys if you defame Heritage or myself in any way to any third parties.”
I strongly suspect that the individuals who purchased the four “ancient” bottles in question were not aware of the problems listed in this thread and that they might have acted differently if they were.
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The consignor coming on here to cry about besmirching his father and family’s name only to never to respond to any followup questions/comments was especially sleazy.
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Sorry I missed this over the last week, such bad behavior from Heritage. I have a couple of 49 VCC, the labels support Don’s contentions.
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Thanks, Don, for your insight. I was looking at the 1949. It is a friend’s birth year.
(I did not bid on it.)
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10 posts were merged into an existing topic: Trolling posts moved from Rudy Kurniawan thread
27 posts were split to a new topic: Trolling posts moved from Rudy Kurniawan thread
So anyways, I definitely think the '49 VCC was a fake, and I wouldn’t have bid on the others, either.
I bet Audouze bought the old ones 
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I agree with our post.
Thanks Don…for years of your hard works to provide your opinions. .
Peter Chiu
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Thank you Peter (and Karl). It’s nice to know my efforts are appreciated by others.
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Thanks for the reply - Don.
Much appreciated your reply…
Peter