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Right Bottle, Wrong Wine
Counterfeit bottles are multiplying as the global demand for collectible wines surges
Mitch Frank
Posted: Wednesday, December 20, 2006
There's
a joke in the restaurant world that Las Vegas dining rooms serve more
Chateau Patrus 1982 in a year than the Pomerol
estate ever made. Sadly, that may not be a gross exaggeration.
Rajat
Parr, wine director for Michael Mina's restaurants in San Francisco and
Las Vegas, remembers when his staff at one of the four Vegas venues
told him of a customer who ordered three bottles of '82
Patrus the previous night. "He drank the first bottle," said
Parr. "And sent the second bottle backit didn't taste right to
himbut he loved the third bottle." Inspecting the corks and empty
bottles, Parr was embarrassed to realize that the first and third
bottles were fakes; the second was the real thing.
There is a
growing fear in the wine industry that counterfeit bottles are on the
rise. While it's impossible to know how widespread the problem is, some
insiders fear as much as 5 percent of wines sold in secondary
marketsthe prized bottles collectors cellar for a decade or moremay
be fakes.
Globalization, trade and technology have all made
counterfeiting easy, and not just in wine. The World Customs Bureau
estimates that $600 billion of counterfeit goodsclothes, luggage,
consumer electronics, cigarettes and yes, wineare sold every year.
Computers can effortlessly reproduce ornate wine labels, and
counterfeiters have learned how to fake out consumers' palates.
In
2002, Hong Kong customs officials uncovered 30 bottles of fake
Chateau Lafite Rothschild 1982, today worth about $800 per
bottle at auction. The counterfeiters had simply bought bottles of
Lafite 1991, a much weaker vintage, then worth only $100 a bottle, and
relabeled them. Last year, an Italian court convicted four men of
selling fake Sassicaia 1995 in Tuscany from the back of a Peugeot
hatchback; a raid on a warehouse found 20,000 bottles of the fake super
Tuscan.
Vigilance is growing, but not as quickly as the demand
for small-production, ageworthy wines. The auction market is booming,
with sales growing 375 percent between 1994 and 2005, as eager new
collectors have driven up prices. That's proved tempting to
counterfeiters, and scared some wine buyers away. "We get 50 offers of
rare wines for sale every day," said Richard Betts, wine director for
Montagna at the Little Nell in Aspen, a Wine Spectator Grand Award
winner. "They can't all be legit." Betts only buys from one auction
house, preferring to buy direct from private collectors he knows.
Auction
houses are quick to defend themselves, however. Acker, Merrall &
Condit president John Kapon insists that all consigned wines are
carefully inspected and that he'll often cut the capsule to inspect the
cork before he'll accept a wine. "Most important, though, is knowing
who you're dealing with," said Kapon. "We try to work only with large
collectors we know and trust, whose wines we've tasted in the past."
Kapon
and Parr both believe the wineries need to be doing more to safeguard
their products. "If you're going to charge $750 a bottle, you have a
responsibility to the consumer," said Kapon.
Some producers have
taken action, such as developing innovative new ways to mark bottles
with serial numbers or by engraving the glass. One Italian company
created what it calls a talking wine label, while Italian producer
Arnaldo Caprai introduced the smart cork to some of its bottlings.
However, "It is a problem for old vintages because no precautions were
taken," explained Jean-Luc Thunevin, owner of Château
Valandraud. Many Burgundy and Rhone producers didn't brand
corks until the 1980s, and some top Bordeaux chateaus kept
limited records of volumes and bottlings before the 1950s of the wines
they produced.
Trying to prevent future counterfeits, some
producers are taking an active interest in how their wine is
distributed. Champagne Louis Roederer created its own U.S. distribution
firm to exercise greater control over where their top cuvée
Cristal goes.
But until more producers take additional steps,
the onus is squarely on the buyer. Parr, for one, keeps a collection of
empty bottles and old corks so he can study what the classics should
look like. "You want people to be careful, but not to panic," said
Betts.
......................................................
Subtle details on the fake label (left) hint at fraud, but the best defense is knowing who you're buying from.
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