New Yorker on ultra-expensive wine counterfeits
Mark Hurst's Good Experience newsletter alerted me to this New Yorker article about the crazy world of very expensive wine and how it is being counterfeited and sold to rich people who don't know the difference.
Link[Michael Broadbent, the head of Christie’s wine department] is a Master of Wine, a professional certification for wine writers, dealers, and sommeliers, which connotes extensive experience with fine wine, and discriminating judgment. He pronounced a 1784 Th.J. Yquem “perfect in every sense: colour, bouquet, taste.”
At two-thirty that December afternoon, Broadbent opened the bidding, at ten thousand pounds. Less than two minutes later, his gavel fell. The winning bidder was Christopher Forbes, the son of Malcolm Forbes and a vice-president of the magazine Forbes. The final price was a hundred and five thousand pounds -- about a hundred and fifty-seven thousand dollars. “It’s more fun than the opera glasses Lincoln was holding when he was shot,” Forbes declared, adding, “And we have those, too.”
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£105,000 is more like $215,000 right now.
Reminds me of the book A Good Year by Peter Mayle.
The auction was in 1985...
The trick is charging people to tell you what the emperor's new clothes look like, apparently.
Long but very interesting article!
This is why I stick with under $10 table
wines.
Under $10 might be going a little far; a $25 bottle isn't going to be counterfeit..
A half-decent wine is actually good. You should give some a shot! I'd recommend some but I mostly know Ohio wines that don't have a wide distribution. (Ie: Henke Winery.)
Concho Y Toro, a Chilean winery, has some decent cheap stuff.
I think it would be far more interesting to just create a totally fictitious winery that doesn't exist, but spread the rumor that they have a truly unique and wonderful wine. That the 2012 Cab. is going to be truly remarkable, and that it's rumored Robert Parker has pre-ordered over 250 cases out of the only 500 to be produced.
The hard part would be if you were really successful and people actually wanted to pre-order.
You know what kind of wine I like? Beer.
this reminds me of that episode of Hustle where the crew create a fake bottle of wine to con the ex-mobster who now owns a restaurant.
Ironically, our oligarchs aren't getting the war they're paying for either.
I realize that quite a few people have relics of Lincoln, but there's something about the way that Forbes talks about the opera glasses that makes it difficult for me to feel sorry about his getting stiffed on the Jefferson bottle.
#12: "Other than that, Mr. Forbes, How was the auction?"
An absolutely spellbinding article. I'm not a collector by any means, but I know enough wine snobs and collectors that this article would be extremely interesting reading for.
This could be a movie!
...Heh, heh, heh! This story reminds me of the fake booze scene in Mr. Roberts, where scotch is faked using medicinal isopropyl, hair tonic and iodine :)
You know, I like wine, but I just can't get behind all this tasting nonsense. Yeah, they taste different, of course, but it's not like "flowery," "blackberry finish," or "full" are quantifiable variables. It's just creative writing. I'm positive that these tasters raving about these 200-year-old wines have never tasted anything older than 100--maybe.
And at the end of the day, who cares? Does it taste good with your food? Yes? Congratulations, you've got a winner!
Poppycock. These rubes get what they deserve.
I recall an episode of some silly "reality" TV show where they fed guests the "highest quality" hor'deuvres, which were actually made from Hormel SPAM, and "French" wine which was actually cheap American port.
The guests raved about the food and wine.
Why spend so much money on something you will very shortly be converting to urine?