Bordeaux Wine Enthusiasts

For those still interested in the Rudy story, and episode of American Greed covering him will air on CNBC tomorrow (7/24) at 10 PM Eastern.

There's an epic thread over on Wine Berserkers dating back to early 2012, with posts from some of the folks involved in exposing Rudy. Here's a link to a recent post in that thread by Don Cornwell.

Love American Greed.

This should be good.

American Greed is Dateline ("Meanwhile, Billy was dumping his mistress' body in the well out back ...") for guys.

I've yet to see an episode of American Greed. I just realized that's tomorrow night - a bunch of us are going to be convening at BWE Palace tomorrow night.

Too bad we don't have a magnum of 1945 DRC RC "Rudy's Cuvee" to drink while watching it.

Thanks for the heads up David. Set the PVR and will catch up with it next week.

He took the fall for the ring....wish they could of uncovererd the higher ups

Great show.
John Kapon . Yikes...........
Laurent Ponsot. Cool..........
Don Cornwell. Had backbone to call out the auction house in UK
Maureen Downey. Smelled a rat from the beginning. In the long run protected Zachy's integrity.

Thanks for the heads up David. Show was great. Finally saw Maureen Downey in the flesh and blood. She helped us line up a number of visits on Spring Mountain years back but never met her. She nailed it from the beginning and kudos to her. Laurent Ponsot was the star of the show and hats off to a man who became the enforcer flying across the ocean to ensure his fake wines were withdrawn from auction to maintain his intefrity and call out the rats. Pretty cool. Fun to watch and brings to light that this is only the tip of the iceberg and I`m sure Rudy was nothing more than a pawn in a larger counterfeit scheme.

Saw it last night too, good stuff.

I disagree on Rudy.
He had a counterfeit factory in his abode.
More than a pawn.

But he may have had help.

I forgot the Frenchman's name who said the wines tasted wrong and doubted they were even Burgundy.
Pretty astute.....

No question Rudy was up to his eyeballs but he certainly wasn't doing this all on his own. Thousands of labels ,equipment in his house etc etc but they said he was churning out tens of thousands of bottles a year. No way he was doing this on his own with a manual corker, manufaturing old glass bottles/capsules/corks/labels etc etc. This was not all done in the house they showed in the show. Many unanswered questions and between Rudy and Hardy they were not the lone wolves wreaking havoc in the high end wine trade throughout the world. Fake wines are a reality now and the industry has taken to anti forgery methods in a big way through the first growths with tracking chips and hologram labels embedded on the bottles/labels. They are not comfortable that the problem has been solved by a long shot.

The auction houses involved have dirty hands too. They were told the wines were fake and proceeded with sales. If Ponsot had not showed do you think the lot would have been sold? I say yes. The lots were there on the floor ready to go.

How did Kapon and Acker Merrill skate around this one? It seemed that they were fully aware they were auctioning fakes and can't see why they haven't been shut down/locked up?? No question idf Ponsot didn't show up at the auction his lots of fakes would have been sold to the unknowing.

I'm with you on Kapon. He was there with Rudy when Ponsot demanded provenance.

They describe $35 million in auction sales through Acker from Rudy consignment in Rudy's last year with auction house commision in the 20% range!!! How the hell do they stay in business and or why are people so stupid to keep buying from them. They must have legal actions pending against them?? Anyone aware??

They settled with Koch a year ago.
http://www.winespectator.com/webfeature/show/id/50279

http://www.winespectator.com/webfeature/show/id/51381

http://www.winespectator.com/webfeature/show/id/51677

http://www.winespectator.com/webfeature/show/id/51248

http://www.winespectator.com/webfeature/show/id/51132

Rob,

Your link just led to further showing how wine fraud and Rudy et al are just the tip of the iceberg. Chinese,Taiwanese seem to be rampant producers of fake everything including wine. Internet sales are fraught with marketing fakes. I wonder how legit WTSO net sales really are. My friends in Florida only look at what the origonal sale price is elsewhere and buy by the caseload and now I question where the wines really came from. I hope they are legit but who can tell these days??

We had the misfortune of having Mr. Kapon at our NYC '03 dinner in 2003.

JimHow wrote:We had the misfortune of having Mr. Kapon at our NYC '03 dinner in 2003.

Yep.
That event I was elbowed out of the way to get a pour of 1983 Margaux.
When I said "Excuse me." They said "Who do you think you are?"
I said "The one who provided the wine."

I still have a bad taste in my mouth.

My nugget is the obnoxious loud talking at his table while Francois, others, and I were speaking.
They brought '82 Cheval Blanc and other epic wines and kept them at their table… after drinking the Anonymous Benefactor's 1982s and all of the other awesome wines.
I knew the dude was a fraud within 60 seconds of talking to him.

JimHow wrote:My nugget is the obnoxious loud talking at his table while Francois, others, and I were speaking.
They brought '82 Cheval Blanc and other epic wines and kept them at their table… after drinking the Anonymous Benefactor's 1982s and all of the other awesome wines.
I knew the dude was a fraud within 60 seconds of talking to him.

I've kept quiet. But after 15 seconds of association I have a lifetime of dislike.

RDD wrote:Yep.That event I was elbowed out of the way to get a pour of 1983 Margaux.When I said "Excuse me." They said "Who do you think you are?"I said "The one who provided the wine."

That's awful - what an a$$hole.

Chris Bublitz

From what I've heard (mostly from Don Cornwell on WineBerserkers), the reasons the Feds didn't prosecute Kapon were:

1) The statute of limitations had run on many/most of the Rudy consignments that were auctioned by AMC
2) With a mostly circumstantial case, they needed Rudy to testify against Kapon, and Rudy wasn't making any deals.

The Feds had a sure thing with Rudy and probably didn't want to take their chances on Kapon.

Winona Chief wrote:

RDD wrote:Yep.That event I was elbowed out of the way to get a pour of 1983 Margaux.When I said "Excuse me." They said "Who do you think you are?"I said "The one who provided the wine."

That's awful - what an a$$hole.

Chris Bublitz

It was not Kapon. Someone in the posse. But I talked to Kapon just a bit and was ready to move somewhere else.

It was fun to go back on the Squires board and read some of the posts by Kapon, Kurniawan and their 12 Angry Men cronies extolling the virtues of what turned out to be their fake DRC and Petrus. The descriptions were so out of line with what one would expect of 40-50 year-old or older wines. There are a bunch of them. When a few people raised questions, there were trampled by the crowd. Here was one from 2005:

"1971 JEROBOAMS OF DRC ROMANEE CONTI AND LA TACHE. Our insanely generous hosts for the night, Dr. C and NY Big Boy double R., brought wines that most of us will never have the chance to drink again for the rest of my life. At first, the La Tache almost blew me back through the window. When I mentioned earlier that the 90 La Tache (see notes for Sat night) still seems too young and not offering up all its charms, the 71 proves my point – EVERYTHING this extraordinary wine has to offer is there – one of the most complicated, layered, extraordinary tastes of any wine ever produced, EVER. The fruit was so ****ing sweet I almost came in my pants (if I were 15 years old I would have!). The color was much light than the Romanee Conti. And here is a note – a month BWs DM (who sadly couldn’t make the Vegas trip as he is a work-a-holic) and TG served a 62 La Tache, 750ml, from Dr. Cs cellar – it was PERFECT – even more evolved, more OPEN, more GIVING than this 71 (maybe a mag of 71 instead of a Jero would) – just a demonstration of the slow evolution of this magical wine. HOWEVER, the JERO OF 71 ROMANEE CONTI turned out to be the mind blower of mind blowers. I have never had a Burgundy that was so thick, unctuous, port-like and intense. It was like liquid chocolate-cherry honey that coated by mouth and wouldn’t go away. IT HAD A TWENTY FOUR HOUR FINISH! This wine worked for me on both a purely hedonistic level AND an intellectual level as well -- ANALOGY: LIQUID SEX (with the most gorgeous girl in the world who also happened to be trained in the arts of Kama Sutra). ON second thought, I would rather drink THIS 71 Jero of Romanee Conti. BOTH WINES: 99.99999999999999999pts."

Thick, unctuous and port-like? A 30+ year old Romanee Conti? I've never had it but it sure doesn't sound like anyone else's TNs. I'll give the guy credit for most likely accurately describing what was in his glass. And perhaps it is not so difficult to understand how easy it can be to get hoodwinked into believing the total fiction that the wine was a 1971 DRC RC. I mean, look at the sorts of scams people fall for every day. In retrospect, it's easy to say even an idiot should have known better. But put me in the right environment, and I'm probably just as big an idiot as any of the 12 Angry Men.

What really rankles are the ones who knew they were fakes and just promoted the scam for profit. The pump and dumpers. Tough to know which ones were criminal and which ones were just plain stupid/gullible. Eric Greenberg was clearly in the former group. Hard to believe that Kapon was so stupid to be unaware.

The fact that "port-like" became a positive thing in a mature Bordeaux...

I'll go out on a limb and say a lot of 2003's will be "port like" in a good way.
A misunderstood vintage.
BUT you had to be selective.

I had JK sit next to me at a small BWE offline. An abrasive encounter. He was kind enough to use my email from the offline email chain to send lots of spam even after several emails requesting removal from his companies emails.

JimHow wrote:My nugget is the obnoxious loud talking at his table while Francois, others, and I were speaking.
They brought '82 Cheval Blanc and other epic wines and kept them at their table… after drinking the Anonymous Benefactor's 1982s and all of the other awesome wines.
I knew the dude was a fraud within 60 seconds of talking to him.

They gave me a pour of their 97 Petrus at that event.

I don't know if someone would fake a 1997.

But then again it was a Petrus, so maybe they would.

Obviously there were many great wines poured, and I got plenty hammered that night, but I do remember thinking to myself the wine didn't seem like anything special.

But I guess I'll never know if it was real or not.

Ha I was just telling the BWEers this weekend that I too got a pour of the unimpressive '97 Petrus from JK. At one point I had Musigny's '67 Petrus in one hand and Kapon's '97 Petrus in the other.

I was sitting between stefan and Francois at this event. This meant I consumed an inordinate amount of wine and walked back to my hotel 70 or 80 blocks away in an attempt to sober up. Another memory I have is having an 83 Margaux thrust into my hand by Ben Nelson and being told to "go forth and pour". Nothing like a BWE convention.

I don't know if anyone noticed in the American Greed show that Maureen Downey described Petrus as "Chateau Petrus". I confess I got a little chuckle out of that. It's an easy mistake to make but surely it's just "Petrus" and not "Chateau Petrus" as there is no chateau Am open to being corrected though.

It has been referenced as Chateau Petrus in the past.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P%C3%A9tr ... u_card.JPG
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/ ... trus03.jpg

Angelus used to be L'Angelus also.