Not only is the size questionable, but the paper is wrong for the era and the château. This lovely 3-liter bottle of 1900 Château Margaux, pictured above, is fantastic (not in a good way). | A fake 3-liter bottle of 1900 Château Margaux with a screen-press label
What I find tragic is that the bottles I encountered were both purchased after Mr. There was a class-action settlement at the time for all who had been victimized. He lost the appeal and was sentenced to 12 months' jail and a 50,000-euro ($67,000) fine. When he appealed, Château Lafite Rothschild joined the other parties in taking action against him. Rouabah had created these fraudulent bottlings and he was convicted of fraud by a French court in 2004. B&G (at the time part of Seagrams), along with Château Margaux and the French police, began an investigation. It was discovered in 2002 that fake 1900 Margaux and Lafite bottles had been sold through auctions in Paris prior to and after the millennium. Khaled Rouabah, a native of North Africa who resided in Brussels. They were made by a convicted forger – Mr. Unfortunately, they have nothing to do with the alleged chateaux, or even Barton & Guestier. These bottles of Château Lafite and Château Margaux – allegedly 1900 B&G wines – started popping up for the millennium celebrations at the end of 1999. billionaire Bill Koch’s private investigators. The general manager of Barton & Guestier (B&G) told me this story, which I had previously heard from one of U.S. 2: 1900 Barton & Guestier Château Lafite and Château Margaux (see right-hand image above) Many shifty vendors and counterfeit-wine apologists like to point out all the ways that ridiculous bottles like this could be legitimate: “The château could have produced it at a later date for a collector who brought in many small bottles.” Were that the case, the bottle would carry paperwork and would have a château-branded cork. But this counterfeiter went the extra mile, piling on melted crayon in an effort to mask the utterly blank cork. If there were large formats made way back in 1870, producers certainly did not turn out extra-sized labels for what would have been one or two bottles.
The size of the bottle is hilarious, as is the large label. This bottle is particularly interesting for several reasons. 1: 1870 Château Latour 6L (see images left and center above) Other examples are made all the more intriguing by the at-times-outrageous stories told by vendors to allay buyers' concerns. Some are obviously fakes and induce laughter at the counterfeiters' shameful attempts at copying some of the greatest wines ever made. And while the issue of wine fraud is very serious, I would like to share some of my favorite finds – an interesting compilation of counterfeit wines. It seems that every time I think I have seen the “worst," I run into something that is even more of a howler. I am often asked, "What is the worst fake you have ever seen?" That is very hard to answer. Of course, Kurniawan is not the only alleged source of fake wines, and over the years I have developed an eye for different counterfeiters' work. Perhaps if Kurniawan had done better homework, or been supplied with more accurate information, he would still be “in business.” Fortunately for the fine- and rare-wine world, he did not, and now it is the task of a few of us to start cleaning up the mess. My grandfather never made that wine, but it is a beautiful bottle.” Roumier’s comment was: “That is a beautiful bottle. The estate's scion, Christophe Roumier, had a great chuckle about the obvious fake.
A few years ago, he was also toting around a large-format bottle of old Domaine Roumier at the annual Burgundy bacchanalia in New York, La Paulée. Some well-known examples include the 2008 Acker, Merrall & Condit wine auction in which alleged counterfeiter Rudy Kurniawan (currently incarcerated) consigned Domaine Ponsot wines that Laurent Ponsot later stated had never been made.īut that was not Kurniawan's only slip-up. There have been some pretty great gaffes in the production of counterfeit wines. All fakes are certainly not created equal.
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