Post: #1

The Man Who Duped Millionaires Into Paying Big Bucks For Fake Wine

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2013/12...-fake-wine

by Ben Goldstein

December 18, 2013 2:31 PM


He was the man with "the nose of a blood hound," as one wine critic once put it.

Rudy Kurniawan was once the toast of the fine-wine world, renowned for his ability to find some of the rarest — and priciest — wines in the world.

He was also, prosecutors alleged, a fraud who duped some of the country's wealthiest wine purchasers with counterfeit bottles of wine that he manufactured in his home laboratory.

And on Wednesday, a Manhattan jury agreed, finding Kurniawan guilty of fraud in connection with selling counterfeit wines and of defrauding a finance company.

The sensational trial began Dec. 9 in a Manhattan federal court. Prosecutors have argued that Kurniawan used his exceptional palate to blend together younger wines with older French wines of poor vintage. He then slapped counterfeit labels on the bottles, prosecutors say, and passed them off as some of the rarest wines on Earth. When these bottles turned up at auctions, the excitement of coming across them often overshadowed bidders' skepticism of whether they were the real thing.

Among those who believed they were duped is billionaire industrialist Bill Koch — yes, a brother to those Kochs — who said he spent $2.1 million on 219 bottles of Kurniawan's wine.

Born in Indonesia but residing in California, Kurniawan began turning heads in the fine-wine scene around 2002, winning over sommeliers, wine critics and auctioneers with his palate and his generosity. He often footed the bill at restaurants, where he poured thousands of dollars of wine from his personal collection for his friends.

"I've never known him not to bring a bottle," testified Truly Hardy, director of auction operations for Acker Merrall & Condit.

Around 2004, prosecutors say, Kurniawan began passing off his fake wines. Last week, both Koch and Laurent Ponsot, of top Burgundy winemaker Domaine Ponsot, testified that they had long suspected that Kurniawan's wares weren't quite what they seemed. Ponsot told jurors that he became suspicious of Kurniawan in 2008, after the collector consigned to auction dozens of bottles of Domaine Ponsot wine of a vintage that had never existed.



Kurniawan was arrested in March 2012. Among the colorful evidence the FBI seized from his home are stacks upon stacks of rare French wine labels that Kurniawan allegedly forged using a laser printer.

But the central mystery for oenophiles has been slower to unravel: What types of wines might Kurniawan have actually poured into those bottles?

And is it even possible to imitate the taste of, say, a rare half-century-old bottle from Bordeaux? One expert says yes, but not without some very old wine mixed in.

"One of the tricks is having some old wine character" — which you can't get without including aged wine in the blend, says Andrew Waterhouse, a wine chemist and professor of oenology at the University of California, Davis.

The "old wine character" might not always strike the casual drinker as desirable. For example, if a bottle of Bordeaux purports to be more than two decades old, he says, its contents should have the distinctive, herbaceous aroma of canned asparagus.

"When you're tasting a rare, old wine, that's part of the deal," Waterhouse says.

Kurniawan likely had a lot of unremarkable old wine at his disposal.

This week, British wine expert Michael Egan inspected invoices addressed to Kurniawan, which included a 2007 order for 904 old bottles of Burgundy. The bottles are cheap by Kurniawan's standards (about $60), and the particular 1970s vintages listed are "very ordinary to poor," Egan testified. When asked how many bottles of the Burgundy he'd recommend to his own clients (who include Koch), Egan answered dryly: "Zero... unless they were cooking with it."

The prosecution's claim that Kurniawan used young California wines in his counterfeits doesn't surprise Waterhouse. He points out that the finest vintages in France correspond historically with warmer summers. Climatic conditions are similarly favorable in California wine country, where almost every summer is dry and warm.

"Of course, you have to use wines of high quality," Waterhouse adds, but many of the California bottles presented as evidence are "fantastic." He points to a 2006 bottle of Marcassin, a California pinot noir seized from Kurniawan's house. Its $200 price tag isn't exactly cheap, but it is much less than the thousands of dollars that Kurniawan's bottles fetched at auction.

Ironically, many of Kurniawan's artful fakes were probably never sipped or even opened. Wine collectors often view rare bottles as investments or trophies to be displayed.

As for Kurniawan's famous palate? Sitting in federal court, he could be seen nursing it with a steady supply of Mentos, Altoids and M&Ms.

Post: #2

Wine tasting and gathering might be one of the biggest mental masturbation hobbies in the world.

Post: #3

Too bad he was caught.

I'm all about fine wine and I've drank from bottles that go for thousands. Honestly it's all a sham, and proof that there are too many people on earth with too much money. You can't make stuff too expensive for them. Whatever the price is, they'll pay. First growth Bordeaux is so grossly inflated due to the insanely high demand. I love me some Chateau Margaux and DRC, but I've had $100 bottles that I enjoyed just as much.

Fine French wine, sturgeon caviar, foie gras, white and black truffles...these are all things that common people could enjoy in the past, albeit for a special occasion. Now, due to the enormous global elite and the ever growing demand, they keep driving the price of this stuff higher and higher to the point where it's just not worth it anymore.

And the worst part is most of them don't appreciate it. Most of them are classless Chinese and Persian nouveau riche that have zero taste, and they only eat that food because that's what rich people eat. In fact, there was a point when lobster was considered garbage and a nuisance to fishermen on the east coast, who had to pick them out of their fishing nets and they'd throw them back. There's an old manuscript from Boston in the 1800s, that dictated that prisoners should not be fed lobster more than 5 nights a week as that was considered cruel punishment. There was so much of it they didn't know what to do with it. More recently, this past lobster season on the east coast was phenomenal and there was a huge glut, but prices didn't come down because of the inflated value of so-called "luxury" items.

Anyway like I said it's too bad this guy got caught. The luxury goods industry is a huge fucking sham and you might as well scam it if you can.

Post: #4

(12-19-2013 03:07 PM)Handsome Creepy Eel Wrote:  Wine tasting and gathering might be one of the biggest mental masturbation hobbies in the world.

I like wine myself but I can't tell the difference between a $2 bottle and $200 bottle. As long as it tastes good to me I'm ok with it.

I'll cook with it mostly and you don't need expensive wine for that.

Post: #5

The old adage of about wine is true: What makes a wine expensive? The price.

If you can fool some very silly rich people--hats off. After all, a fool is born every minute.

The worst are these pretentious people who sit around grading, admiring, and critiquing wine with flowery imagery. The only reason I drink wine is to get a little bit drunk.

Post: #6

Wine is worth getting into. Start going to wine tastings and read up a bit. A year's worth of interest will yield you a lifetime of appreciation.

At the very least, learn the basics of old-world wines:

Spain-Sherry (Xeres), Cava, Ribera Del Duero, Priorat, Rioja, Txakoli

France- Alsace, Beajolais, Bordeaux, Burgundy, Champagne, Jura, Loire, Languedoc-Roussillon, Provence, Rhone

Italy- Aosta, Piedmont, Lombardy, Veneto, Tuscany, Umbria, Emilia-Romagna, Abruzzo, Calabria, Sicily, Apulia

A smattering of Rieslings from Germany, Zweigelt from Austria, and Tokaji from Hungary never hurts either. Having a foundation of wine and spirits knowledge should be part of every man's portfolio of interests.

Post: #7

Is there a way to do this with audiophiles?

I see a lot of potential in vintage power cables.

Post: #8

(12-19-2013 03:20 PM)Flavius Aetius Wrote:  The old adage of about wine is true: What makes a wine expensive? The price.

To a certain point...yes. Once you get past the $200 per bottle mark it gets hard to justify.

But the difference between Robert Mondavi or Chateau St. Michelle and a small biodynamic winery in the back country of Spain are huge. There are wineries where harvesting is done by hand and there's 10 times the labor involved with producing the fruit. Also, with AOC, DOCG, DOP wines, the fruit yield per hectare is not allowed to go past a certain point which obviously affects how much wine is produced, thus raising the price.

If you're just looking to get drunk you're better off with grain spirits.

Post: #9

I wish he got away with it. Bunch of rich fucking retards. Especially the moron who spent $2.1 million on one stock of bottles.

Post: #10

Bonus points for fucking over the Koch Bros.

RE: Lobster prices, yeah they did actually come down pretty substantially this summer. A couple lobstermen I know are pretty worried about it, they were making pennies compared to what the traditional prices are. And keep in mind these lobstermen aren't exactly raking in the dough to begin with.

Post: #11

(12-19-2013 03:31 PM)thedude3737 Wrote:  If you're just looking to get drunk you're better off with grain spirits.

I like whiskey but wine is better with dinner.

Post: #12

(12-19-2013 03:42 PM)MHaes Wrote:  Bonus points for fucking over the Koch Bros.

RE: Lobster prices, yeah they did actually come down pretty substantially this summer. A couple lobstermen I know are pretty worried about it, they were making pennies compared to what the traditional prices are. And keep in mind these lobstermen aren't exactly raking in the dough to begin with.

The prices went down for lobstermen but wholesalers didn't lower their prices because they knew they could get the same price. At least here on the west coast.

Post: #13

90 percent of people have no idea what fine alcohol taste like.

I don't and I personally don't car
Wine taste like wine to me taste slight differences in "good" wines I can only...I can barely taste the different between good and expensive whiskeys.

For this fact..I always buy middle priced wine.
Often the most expensive wine on the menu isn't the best. Its only mid range...people don't realize that.
Every industry will mark up the mid range alcohol.


It serves these people right for buying into something they really had no idea about...just for the status

Post: #14

@thedude3737

Yeah completely correct. Restaurant prices
stayed the same. The price lobstermen got paid went way down, and the wholesalers pocketed those new profits.

Post: #15

(12-19-2013 03:53 PM)Sourcecode Wrote:  For this fact..I always buy middle priced wine.
Often the most expensive wine on the menu isn't the best. Its only mid range...people don't realize that.
Every industry will mark up the mid range alcohol.

I would take this further and state that if you don't know much about wine, just order the cheapest by the glass.

If there are good wines on the list, chances are they're all mostly good. If it's another wine list put together by Southern Wine and Spirits then it's all crap and you might as well go with the cheapest.

99% of restaurants don't have a good wine list.

Post: #16

@dude3737- same stuff w/black caviar. It used to be considered "garbage food". People would throw it away. Nowadays, they can't fish sturgeon fast enough to cut them open.

I have a hookup here that gives me beluga black-caviar for 150/lb, compared to the 400-600 retail. In high end stores, the rarest varieties reach upwards of 20 thousand per pound.

Post: #17

(12-19-2013 04:24 PM)DVY Wrote:  @dude3737- same stuff w/black caviar. It used to be considered "garbage food". People would throw it away. Nowadays, they can't fish sturgeon fast enough to cut them open.

I have a hookup here that gives me beluga black-caviar for 150/lb, compared to the 400-600 retail. In high end stores, the rarest varieties reach upwards of 20 thousand per pound.

Yep. My dad grew up in Turkey and says that back then a kilo, 2.2 lb, of caviar was $5. Adjusted to 2013 that's only $12.90.

Post: #18

I am reminded of this sketch:





I am very sceptical when people talk about famous wines, foods, etc. I bet the average person would have a record no better than guessing if he were a participant in a blind taste test.

Post: #19

These guys always get fucked by their greed. He was doing this since 2004 and just recently got caught. Dude could've disappeared after a couple years with a few mil and no one would have been the wiser.

Post: #20

(12-19-2013 08:46 PM)Enigma Wrote:  These guys always get fucked by their greed. He was doing this since 2004 and just recently got caught. Dude could've disappeared after a couple years with a few mil and no one would have been the wiser.

Happens to the type of wealthy people he was fucking too (cf. Eike Batista). Greed is part of the human condition. Helps to have a walk away number.

Post: #21

This guy would of been good if he just used his credibility to se his own shit and just use the same process to dupe people into buying shit wines. Strait up immigrant hustle tactics with being so brazen to fraud and sell wines that didn't even exist - you know he fuking knew that - but did not give a fuck. You only learn that brazen smugness hustling in the 3rd-world.

The money is now in fleecing the elites and oligarchs, and especially as noted by @thedude the nouveau riche whom can't tell the difference of quality for shit. I've seen rich Saudi goons here in Toronto after a night out at a shitty lounge go stuff Themselves with BK with their Mazaratis and Lambos parked illegally out front.

Post: #22

(12-19-2013 04:24 PM)DVY Wrote:  @dude3737- same stuff w/black caviar. It used to be considered "garbage food". People would throw it away. Nowadays, they can't fish sturgeon fast enough to cut them open.

Where I'm from sturgeon was a common fish a century ago and now it's extinct in the whole country. It's no surprise that the stuff became more expensive as it became rarer. The only silly thing here is that there's nothing particularily good about it compared to most fish eggs, it's just rare, but now you see people who don't even eat fish eggs going after caviar like it's a delicacy to them.

Scamming Westerners with the eggs of some other fish dyed black probably employs tens of thousands of Russians each year. Few people can tell the difference anyway and fish eggs are an acquired taste so most people are unlikely to even like genuine black caviar on their first try.

(Fish eggs have always been popular in places like Scandinavia and Japan where half the diet is fish, not something anyone would have thrown away ever. I don't understand why English-speaking nations aren't into fish eggs when the UK is an island country, though.)

Post: #23

The only reason to know about wine in my opinion is to fake it around girls that actually care about this shit. I am loving the posts in this thread.

I have a pro tip for you guys. Date cute young poor girls from other countries.

A 21 year old girl told me her favorite pizza is pizza hut without a hint of irony or sarcasm. My heart melted. Then I ordered an $11 pizza and we watched movies and fucked. And other guys can't even hit on her if they don't speak Spanish.

Compare that to having to pick up the tab with some girl who wants to try the newest specialty cocktail at some fancy circle jerk trendy lounge. I have no patience for that shit.. Makes me not even want to get girls' numbers.

Post: #24

(12-19-2013 09:09 PM)kosko Wrote:  This guy would of been good if he just used his credibility to se his own shit and just use the same process to dupe people into buying shit wines. Strait up immigrant hustle tactics with being so brazen to fraud and sell wines that didn't even exist - you know he fuking knew that - but did not give a fuck. You only learn that brazen smugness hustling in the 3rd-world.

The money is now in fleecing the elites and oligarchs, and especially as noted by @thedude the nouveau riche whom can't tell the difference of quality for shit. I've seen rich Saudi goons here in Toronto after a night out at a shitty lounge go stuff Themselves with BK with their Mazaratis and Lambos parked illegally out front.

Well Said.

Yeah I remember one night dropping some friends off when the clubs were getting out, and we saw 4 Lambos parked in a Pizza Pizza lot downtown.

Sums up the Toronto try hard mentality in a lot of ways.

Post: #25

To this day, i can not understand what people find in wine, specially old wine. Never like it, and i have tasted quite of wine. Give me goold beers instead!