The astronomical increase in value of both fine art and fine wine, even in times of economic recession, prompts investors and entrepreneurs, legitimate and illicit alike. The surge in demand for fine wine over the last decade, particularly in Asia, has motivated fraudsters. Anything that is valuable, whether it is a painting or a bottle of wine, is in danger of being faked.
（Continue from last issue）
Jefferson in Paris
Until recently the most notorious of fake wine scandals, albeit never proven conclusively, was the sale of a bottle of 1787 Lafite that had apparently belonged to Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), third President of the United States (1801-1809) and the principal author of the 1776 Declaration of Independence.
Jefferson lived in Paris from 1784 to 1789 as Minister to France. He was an enthusiastic drinker and bought large quantities of wines from France’s classic regions, particularly Bordeaux.
In 1985 a German wine collector called Hardy Rodenstock—aka Meinhard Görke, a Polish-born manager and publisher of Schlager music—claimed to have discovered a cellar in Paris that contained several old bottles, including 1784 and 1787 Château Lafite, some of which were engraved with the initials “Th.J.”
Having been authenticated by Michael Broadbent MW of Christie’s, the engraved 1787 Lafite was sold at a London auction on December 5, 1985 for £105,000, a record price for a single bottle of wine that stood until October 2010. Other bottles of “Jefferson Lafite” were subsequently sold.
Rodenstock’s reputation as the source of extraordinary wines became unassailable. His tastings were legendary, including a weeklong, 125-vintage vertical of Château d'Yquem at Munich’s Hotel Königshof in September 1998.
Cinder’s Embers
Despite repeated requests from Broadbent, Rodenstock never provided anything like a provenance for his extraordinary wine collection, beyond vague stories about cellars in Paris and Venezuela. He would not even disclose how many bottles he had found.
The euphemistic “Property of a Gentleman” phrase, behind which sellers of art often hide, emerged in the 18th century when aristocrats, forced by the end of the Feudal system to sell their family treasures, did not want people to know they were in dire straits. Could such anonymity have helped to perpetuate crime?
Broadbent contacted Cinder Goodwin, who had spent 15 years editing Jefferson’s memorandum books. She could not find any record of wines of the 1787 vintage in Jefferson’s meticulous records. Goodwin also noted that Jefferson initialed his correspondence as “Th:J,” with a colon, whereas the bottles were engraved as “Th.J.” Nonetheless, the sale went ahead.
Other details subsequently emerged. Rodenstock was apparently known among Bordeaux antiques dealers for buying old, empty bottles. It would have taken an 18th century engraver about three hours to write “Lafite 1787 Th.J” on a glass bottle—and Jefferson owned hundreds of bottles.
Koch Cola
In 1988 the billionaire American businessman William Koch purchased four bottles of these Jefferson wines for $500,000. Koch mounted an exhibition of his art and antiques collection at Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts in 2005. The museum wanted more proof of the bottles’ authenticity, so Koch contacted the Jefferson Memorial Foundation at Monticello, which was unable to authenticate the wines. Further investigation revealed that the original source of the now apparently forged wines was Rodenstock.
Fond of litigation—he spent 20 years in a legal tussle with two of his brothers—Koch chose to take legal action against Rodenstock, filing a civil lawsuit against him in a New York federal court on August 31, 2006. Koch claimed that he had been defrauded, declaring, “Rodenstock is just the tip of the iceberg. I plan to put people in jail. I plan to get my money back and I plan to force the auction houses and retailers to make serious changes.” Like the Prince of Morocco who chose the gold casket with the inscription, “Who chooseth me shall gain what many men desire”, only to find a skeleton’s head with a message in its eye socket, Koch seemingly discovered that at wine auctions all that glisters is not gold.
Golden slumbers
The anonymous vendor of Acker Merrall & Condit’s “Golden Cellar” in October 2007 was allegedly Eric Greenberg, founder of Scient and Viant, two of the earliest Internet consulting firms, which made Greenberg a paper billionaire by the time he was 35. Greenberg had apparently already sold 17,000 bottles through Zachys in October 2005. At this sale, Koch bought 11 bottles that he has subsequently claimed were fakes.
On October 26, 2006, Koch filed a federal lawsuit against Greenberg and Zachys Wine Auctions. Koch alleged that Greenberg originally approached Sotheby’s to handle the sale. Sotheby’s Worldwide Head of Wine Serena Sutcliffe MW inspected Greenberg’s collection, according to Koch, concluded that many bottles were fakes, and refused to auction the wines. Greenberg then approached Zachys. The wines Koch purchased at the Zachys sale included a magnum of Pétrus 1921, a magnum of Lafite 1870, and a bottle of Lafite 1811. Koch says that he spent a total of $3.7 million at the sale, which gives some insight into the sums that serious (and wealthy) collectors will spend on wine.
Koch re-filed against Rodenstock on February 11, 2008. In September 2009 Koch filed against the Indonesian-born collector Rudy Kurniawan (whose real name, according to the paperwork, was Zhen Wang Huang), claiming that Kurniawan had sold him (via Acker Merrall & Condit) counterfeits and that Kurniawan had defaulted on $8.9 million in advances extended to him by Acker. Nobody at this time could have predicted what would happen to Kurniawan in March 2012 and the fallout from it.
The case against one of the auction houses was thrown out in June 2010 but Koch persisted. Finally, in October 2012, Koch’s case against another auction house was dismissed when the appeals court agreed that the statute of limitations had expired. Doubtless Koch will try again in a case that had become like Jarndyce vs. Jarndyce in Charles Dickens’s Bleak House—an endless lawsuit.
A sour taste
Michael Broadbent MW successfully sued Random House, the UK publisher of Benjamin Wallace’s book, The Billionaire’s Vinegar, in October 2009. As Broadbent’s solicitor put it, “The book made allegations which suggested that Mr. Broadbent had behaved in an unprofessional manner in the way in which he had auctioned some of these bottles and that his relationship and dealings with Hardy Rodenstock, who discovered the original collection, was suspected of being improper.” The book is no longer available in the UK, although it was a best seller in the United States. A Hollywood consortium has purchased the film rights.
It has been nearly three decades since Rodenstock bestrode the fine wine world like a colossus but the litigation goes on. We will probably never know the truth about that bottle of Lafite 1787. It is similar to the controversy surrounding the Wallace Collection’s twelve paintings that were attributed to Rembrandt. In 1992 John Ingamells, the Director of the Collection dismissed eleven as fakes. He concluded, “Discussion will probably never end.” The Rembrandt Research Project is still analyzing the eleven disputed canvases.
(To be continued)
作者简介：斯图亚特·乔治，已从事酿酒业十四年，走遍了欧洲酿酒区，并到访南非、澳大利亚、新西兰、巴西等地的酿酒区。2003年，他被评为“英国年度年轻葡萄酒作家”，是畅销书《1001瓶你死之前必喝的酒》的作者之一。