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Chen’s familiarity with wine counterfeiting is underscored by a post from U.S. wine merchant Thatcher Baker-Briggs on the website wineberserkers.com in September 2023. In the post, Baker-Briggs noted that Chen and his wife had attended seminars by Maureen Downey, the founder of winefraud.com and an FBI consultant on the Rudy Kurniawan case, making her one of the world’s leading experts on wine fraud.
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Thanks for including some more depth. Decanter broke this a few weeks ago as well, which I posted in the Pierre Chen Auction thread, given the connection.
“The Chambertin from Domaine Dujac, which has a total production of no more than 500 bottles. Taiwan typically receives an annual allocation of just one bottle, yet insiders report that several hundred bottles from the 2006 vintage alone are circulating on the island republic east of China”
To be honest - I really dislike this article and I very much do not like that I am being quoted off of a forum.
To be clear - I am not insinuating any insider knowledge or simply that being trained in how to avoid fraudulent wine has made him a mastermind.
In reality, these articles are more fluff than anything. By no means am I vouching or vetting anything - but Pierre and Woods art collection could probably buy every single bottle of DRC in the open market today and there would be enough left over for the 22 vintage lol and probably the Jayer and d’Auvenay around too.
While I think its showy news and ultimately selling fraudulent bottles has a high probability of truth behind it, I cannot imagine a family who has near unlimited funds to be a mastermind behind intentionally selling fake bottles of wine.
SECONDLY - Dujac has something like almost 3/4 of a ha of Chambertin and Beze- they are making way more than 500 bottles of Chambertin. I have seen hundreds and hundreds of bottles of Dujac Chambertin in cellars and I can tell you 100% they were real as they came directly from the (then) owner of the vineyard.
I think that if you are going to write an article like this - and I know that Crurated picked it up also (which does absolutely nothing in my opinion to add a “professional testimony”) - I think it’s important to have very detailed facts and an understanding.
I am definitely not saying he didn’t sell problematic bottles, but I think diligence in background is key before making huge claims. Not only are they claiming Wood did this. It of course adds that somehow Pierre might be involved. And now I am somehow saying that he knows about fake wine and so he is making fake wine??
Not a fan and it’s absolutely not what I am saying or said. What I did say was that there is no way you have that large of a collection and don’t have fake bottles and I will say it was always a conversation about how they tried to avoid them.
Not vetting, not on anyones side. Stating facts. I am NOT saying he was educating himself to be the next Rudi.
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Thatcher,
I agree with you that when writing an article like that, facts and accuracy matter. So on the basis of our agreement on this matter, you should perhaps have taken a moment to look up our surfaces of Chambertin and Chambertin Clos de Bèze. For those of us not necessarily familiar with this wine from our production, we have about 0,05ha of Chambertin and 0,24ha of Clos de Bèze and blend the two, meaning that all of the wine is released under the Chambertin appellation. So as you can see, you are off by a factor of about 2.5 on the surface we farm.
Our average production is about 4 barrels, so 1,200 bottle equivalents. Part of the production is bottled as magnums and jeroboams, so in any given year, there is typically fewer than 900 bottles of 75cl.
We do own the vineyard. Until 2019 included, we had a metayage (sharecropping) agreement with the owner, and have since moved on to a fermage.
We sold our portion through regular channels until the 2009 or 2010 vintage (I need to check back on this) and then held back our share as it was hitting the auction market too fast. Our share was then 55% of the production, and I think this is where the writer got mixed up and went with 600 bottles, if I give them the benefit of the doubt.
Our biggest single market, back then, was the US and it received no more than 90 bottles in any given vintage, to be split up among different retailers. The owner was free to sell his share at his discretion. My understanding was that he sold mostly at auction, but I may be wrong on this fact.
While it is possible that some of the cellars you have seen have contained “hundreds and hundreds of bottles of Dujac Chambertin” straight from the owner, he would not have been able to fill many cellars in this type of quantity. We have little recourse, but I would strongly advise anyone contemplating the purchase of bottles of Chambertin in any sort of quantity to be circumspect and ask a lot of questions. Large quantities are deeply suspicious.
From 2013 onwards, there should be a Prooftag on every bottle offering easy verification. We are informed when people check bottles and it is always surprising to me how very rarely this is done. For instance, I don’t think any of the auction houses do it, maybe from a fear of revealing who is reselling their bottles.
We would have hoped that the recent scandal in Taiwan would have sparked an investigation and that many of the aggrieved customers would have complained, leading to law enforcement to probe deeper, but at least from afar, it seems like things have mostly been dealt with amicably and brushed under the carpet in order to minimize embarrassment. One hopes the fake bottles have been destroyed, but I have not heard of it if they have been.
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Hey @Jeremy_Seysses Thanks for the great post! I am frankly shocked that the auction houses never check. When are we drinking riesling and 69 Bonne Mares again!
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Given the posts above, the observation of cellars full of “hundreds and hundreds” of bottles of Dujac Chambertin just reinforces how likely corrupted the supplies of desirable wines are floating around in the world. How sad it is that one upon a time, this kind of thing was more of a curiosity than a serious issue. Makes one want to just drink village wines and be happy they are not priced in the stratosphere. Let the billionaires of the world collect and hoard large quantities of these wines, even of some of them are fake, so they can feel special. Someday perhaps they will go back to collect paintings…
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Thanks Jeremy. It’s always good to read your posts.
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Hey Jeremy,
Thanks for this - when I read the article I dove into what the production was. I assumed that Sorting Table would be accurate as the importer but then I looked up Clive Coates Inside of Burgundy and neither are what you mention.
Sorting Table says .74 ha and CC says .59ha (From the 2008 Edition)
- Winery Holdings: 0.73 ha (1.83 acres) includes 0.50 ha (1.24 acres) Chambertin and 0.23 ha (0.59 acre) Chambertin-Clos de Bèze
Clive Coates Inside of Burgundy says Dujac .0.3ha of Chambertin and Dujac Beze . 29ha
It’s certainly not “common” to have a large quantity of Dujac Chambertin in the cellar - I think this is the same as other wines also. It’s not common to have large quantities of Leroy Chambertin either - but the amount of that wine I have seen in cellars (with proven provenance) is quite high. When someone with unlimited resources wants something - there are only a few things that are unattainable.
To just give some perspective on sourcing large quantities of wines - in the span of 365 days - just of the vintage 2017 - 48 750ML / 12 1.5L / 2 3L were auctioned. This is only auction and this is only the 2017 vintage. And currently on Wine Searcher there is another 60 + bottles of 2017 Chambertin available to purchase. While of course, I cannot verify the provenance from just looking at listing on wine searcher - If you are worth billions of dollars and pay someone to buy wine for you. In this example - I could source 100-200 bottles extremely easily in the span of 2 years and imagine if you have been buying the wine since 2005…
What I am not saying is that the wine in Taiwan is real. I cannot and do not know any facts about this. If the wine is fake - then that is very sad. Its interesting that it’s 2006 as its not the most in demand vintage and perhaps people would say “well its 06 it can’t be fake”. That being said there has been (totally unvetted provenance) 257 bottles of 06 Chambertin auctioned since 2010. As someone who gets paid to bid on auction on other peoples behalf, it’s not unfathomable to have purchased 25-50% of these lots especially from 2018 forward when auction houses were a bit louder at promoting sales.
Bottom line - it’s always disheartening when fraudulent wine comes up. And @Jeremy_Seysses I too would love to see an investigation take place. Sorry that this is happening to you and friends~
I will see that Sorting Table correct their website. For Clive Coates, that will be trickier.
We have sold, all in all, 60 bottles of 2017 Chambertin to direct clients. The rest comes, we hope, from the owner of the vineyard.
I do not disagree that when someone with resources pays someone to find a wine they want, they usually get it. I got to witness that first hand and my conclusion is that what this does is push some entrepreneur to make some for them. Some wine simply aren’t available in quantity.
The other thing about Wine Searcher listings is that there is frequently a great disconnect between what is on offer and what is really in inventory. Don’t take those listings as gospel.
And thank you for the shoutout and invitation @Robert_Dentice !
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Of course !
Don’t worry - I would never buy the wine from some random HK or ML China vendor. And of course - most of them are brokered off of each other. But just saying 
@ThatcherBakerBriggs do you use the proof tag to confirm authenticity with the Domaine?
This has been brewing for some time in Taiwan and like you said, weirdly swept under the rug. The big time burgundy collecting group there is small and fairly tight knit and due to the outrageous 30% import tax on wine, many tend to buy from the same places within the country. Everyone is also notoriously private so that probably has a something to do with it too. First time I heard about it was a Coche CC dinner where everyone brought bottles from the same “source” to test.
The question everyone asked was “he’s so rich? why would he fake wine?”
But it’s pretty questionable how someone ends up with so much fake wine and it all traces back to him. Doubt he’s making wine in his mansion basement, but maybe pulled a Greenberg and ended up with a bunch of fake wine from some sources he bought from and then tried to offload it.
If the proof tag is there. Of course!
However something that is increasingly popular depending on the method. Is removing or disabling as it can be tracked by the Domaine.
Sometimes it can be - in the case of Selosse - the NFC which shows who it was intended for. But this also only work IF the person receiving checks it in. They are often disabled now because the restaurants are selling back door. There was also a time quite recently - last year when the French Customs got involved as apparently the tracking is against EU regulations. I guess you can’t track something when title is passed. But to be 100% honest. I am not 100% sure how that has ended. My understanding was that it was supposed to stop - but I can’t speak facts on this. I will actually follow up to see where it ended.
In the case of things like Bizot or others where the clients names are on the proof tag - most people prefer to remove it if they decide to sell. Even coming like Prevost magnums have a serial number on the bottom and someone scrapes them off!
So there are a lot of things out there set to help but are often removed. The same thing with Crurated - in 99% of the examples, you can just remove the QR code on the bottle. And as to what is actually happening - is that a lot of trade - specifically when it comes to something like Charles Lachaux where it’s no longer in the retail market. They are buying it / removing it and then re selling it from the Crurated platform. They have no controls set in place unlike - ironically someone like Liv-Ex where you have to get vetted to be a member of trade. Not that I am sure it’s 100%. Sure the wine is 100% real - but then there is no way to than prove that in 20 years from now.
Proof tagging is amazing and super helpful - just in a complex market - it’s not so easy. Look at the Sevens Domaine Montrachet - the clients name is on the bottle itself and people just remove it and auction it off to make 20-30k!
@CFu - I would say that anyone buying 20-50 million worth of wine over 5-10+ years has never seen about 95% of their collection. So it wouldn’t surprise me if someone was buying a ton of wine from someone they trusted that shit could very easily go south. A very close friend of mine was doing this for 5 years and it turns out that about 2m worth of wine was just missing… So it’s not that crazy that you could buy a bunch of wine and never even know. Obviously if you know - it’s a different story, but when you buy 60 bottles of La Tache on one invoice every month for a year. Shit goes crazy.
From experience I can tell you that a lot of big buyers haven’t seen their wine. Not that I think that would change anything.
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I wonder if its a GDPR breach. Say I ask a merchant who the buyer of a wine is, they arent legally allowed to disclose that information to the chateau, so the chateau can only track points of contact in supply chain rather than into individuals hands?
That was my understanding because they were tracking the physical location of the bottle and if you scanned it in your home. It would show that!
But I will ask to get more details as I’d like to know the facts and not speak incorrectly.
That is fascinating. I guess people in the trade like auction houses are not willing to refuse wines with proof tags removed. Thanks for the info.
that’s what I’m saying. He didn’t know when he bought them cause he was buying so indiscriminately with whomever could fill what he wanted.
But then… when he did know… he offloaded them.
ala pulling a greenberg
Apple can’t make a water proof capsule air tag that goes on the inside of the bottle…
Or put the tag in the middle of the cork. There has to be a more foolproof way.