More Details About Kurniawan’s Alleged Counterfeiting Operation

Dear Robert Joseph,
was Hardy Rodenstock ever convicted? I honestly don#t remember. And if he was, I don’t think all his wines were fakes, so some people may have been taken in some of the time, but never all people all of the time. If I were to get involved in such dubious activities, I’d serve the real McCoy to the chosen celebrities and flog the dodgy stuff at auctions. Sadly (for my finacial status) or fortunately (for wine lovers) I lack the criminal energy.

Paul Wasserman – I applaud you for your comments! I’m sure that you realize that this could have a negative impact on your family’s business. Kudos to you for speaking out!

As a fine wine retailer, this type of situation is VERY difficult to for me. Every time that one of these situations arise, it makes it harder to sell back vintages. Also, to be perfectly honest, it may be harder to sell Wasserman wines. Perhaps, we could get the ’10 Mugnier and Vogues at a 50% discount? =)

Laurent – THANK YOU for your diligence! We need this out of you, so please continue your quest to ferret out the culprits! I sell your current releases, the wines are gone and I no longer think about it… I move on to securing, and selling, the next vintage. If, by some chance, I have the opportunity to sell a back vintages, I’d like to know that the wines are legit., and, that my clients are securing YOUR wines. Merci beaucoup! As strange as it sounds, this is a credit to your work, the fact that somebody wants to counterfeit your wines must mean that they are something special!

Rudy K – As an American, I firmly believe that you are innocent until proven guilty. If in fact you are innocent, I wish you no harm. If you did create bottles, then shame on you! I’m assuming through Paul Wasserman’s post that you had a great appreciation for wine at one time. If you “faked” bottles, then you have put the entire wine industry in jeopardy…. you have sacrificed my livelihood (fine wine sales) for your own benefit. If, indeed, you did this, the heck with you!

For the rest of you – try to find the Northern Exposure episode “The Big Feast” … it’s GREAT… Shelly breaks a bottle and creates a fake through tasting notes. Wonderfully funny viewing from a wine lover’s standpoint.

Rudy K – If you did this… shame on you!

Retailers/ Distributors/ Consumers – Don’t lose faith in the Wasserman brands. The family has been instrumental in bringing GREAT wines to the US. It is solely due to Becky, Russell and the boys (also Caro) that we have access to some wonderful wines.

Thoughts?

Taking the comments (and the indictment) at face value, we have here a classic case of over-reach turning into obsession turning into addiction turning into criminality.

I’m sure Bernie Madoff was once a pretty successful broker, on a small scale. He built his reputation as a “genius” and then had to continue generating fantastic returns to justify his reputation, which by now was an essential part of his self-image. Similarly I have never known a case of scientific fraud (and I’ve been a couple degrees away from several) where the perpetrator wasn’t regarded as a “genius,” able to do things that no one else could accomplish.

When someone is too good to be true, they’re quite often neither.

Mike. Many thanks and congratulations for this fascinating and detailed coverage along with some spellbinding comments.

Like every scandal, this one needed a smoking gun, and in this case, it was the Acker Merrall Ponsot sale that started this. One thing though has always bothered me very much about the handling of this in the first place. Acker knew very well in the days (weeks?) before the sale of Laurent Ponsot’s misgivings about the genuinity of these bottles and still went ahead with the sale. It took Laurent to come personally to the auction for them to take the wines out of the catalogue…

Scott/Bill,

Bill, whether or not you wish to question Scott’s accumen insofar as his ability to discern “real” wines from fakes (and I’ll vouch for Scott’s palate (except for Shiraz) & the breadth/depth of his wine experience), I believe that Scott is spot on with his belief that Rudy bought & drank well/sold some % of fakes. I don’t know when he started producing/selling counterfeit bottles. If he followed the Rodenstock model than establishing ones credibility first, followed by non-questioned introduction of some %% of fakes (with a health % of self-induced market manipulation in between (at least thats the theory I’m leaning towards in my book, after about a year of research into the wine auctions/fakes)), than the wines he was buying/drinking/selling in 1998-2003 (4? 5? 6?….not 7) were almost all assuredly real.

Take it from someone whose professional livelihood depends on one’s ability to produce wine that hits a certain “flavor profile” (or score if you prefer): it isn’t that hard to blend to a style/flavor, especially if price isn’t really an object. Especially if that person has a decent palate, and has lots of experience with a subset of wines that very, very few people are reasonably familiar with (like well under 100 people, worldwide). Heck, and thats if Rudy, like (supposedly) Roddenstock before him actually cared about his ability to blend to “fool the critics”. Roddenstock was, to a certain extent, creating a market that up to that point didn’t really exist, and then capitalizing on it. Roddenstock NEEDED to establish his credibility with both the critics and the British wine/auction press/trade. Rudy didn’t need to–the internet + scuttlebutt + modern wine media established his credibility for him. Scott’s point, which I largely agree with, is that when Rudy was buying literally millions of dollars worth of wine every year, and very publicly to boot, on top of 5+ years of hedonistic escapades, established his credibility, to a certain degree, beyond reproach.

There are apparently 25 pallets (@56 cases pp = 1300-1400 cases) that Rudy owns (well at least acquired….per the FBI actual ownership might be a bit fuzzy) sitting in a warehouse in Arcadia and hasn’t touched/moved for years. He would occasionally pull 5-15 cases from his pile & take them with him. I believe this is Rudy’s drinking stash…..as to what % of the $25-75m of wine that Rudy sold between 2002 & 2012 were fakes….that is the question that is going to haunt the market for some time.

Bill

If has nothing to with anything other than simple math. He was buying millions of dollars worth of wines through traditional channels. Auction, broker, retain and from the domaine/chateaux. From what I have gathered his
acquisitions were greater than his sales. Standa
to reason that his plan was to acquire and drink real
and sell fakes. Regardless of any long con strategy, there has got to be a lot of legit wine in his buys and drinks or what is still in his collection. He made his rep on the buy and despite his legendary generosity, I can’t imagine he drank through it. Your theories about his intent and actions completey ignores his acquisition activity. It is that cohort of wine which has high probability of legitimacy.

As for the rest, it has nothing to do with me.

Scott, I appreciate your clarification re: fraud, but I am not buying your “likely possibility that the vast amounts of wine that he drank and shared were legit and not all or even predominately fake”. Understand that I realize that not every bottle of wine that Rudy touched was fake, but your grasping at that straw in the face of what the man was pretty clearly up to, and making foolishly sweeping statements about his “vast” amounts of genuine wine. Unless this continues to be a thinly veiled defense of your own tasting acumen in the face of association with a shady character, or unless you have some concrete evidence of Rudy’s innocence, I fail to see why you would concern yourself with the “unfairness” of the implication that all wine associated with this guy has been phony. Let the criminal justice system deal with this man’s guilt or innocence, and let us stipulate (as we ex-lawyers like to say) that he drank and served legit wines. But let us also stipulate that that fact instantly becomes irrelevant or, per Mike Opdahl’s take on this, worse, if Rudy’s vaunted generosity was but a tool in his wine fraud toolbox…

Mike (Opdahl)

Oh no, I was not suggesting his generosity, etc somehow obviates or excuses anything. If proven guilty, and the evidence as shown certainly seems compelling, then of course all of his actions related to wine, etc become suspect. There is no justification for fraud. I was merely referring to the likely probability that the vast amounts of wine that he drank and shared were legit and not all or predominantly fake. I don’t think it is fair to suggest or imply that every bottle consumed with or by him or that he sent to auction were fakes. I feel badly for anyone who holds a fake bottle and I feel badly for anyone holding a legit bottle acquired from him as their provenance is forever tainted and the value of that holding forever impaired and when consumed, there will always be that lingering doubt of authenticity…

The rest of it is about the wines that are not fake. Sorry if I wasn’t clearer on that. I am in no way excusing or apologizing for anything he has done. I hope this is not true, but I cannot see a reasonable way of that ever being the case.

Scott, one quibble–your comment that whatever Rudy may have done (forgery-wise) doesn’t invalidate the rest of it (andby that I’m assuming you meant his legendary generousity) doesnt sit well with me under the theory that this entire exercise could well have been part of a long-con; that by establishing his bonafides by spending $$$ entertaining/opening (researching?) he would be able to game the industry to the tune of $$$$$$$$$$$$.

I’ve spent alot of time on this over the past few months and all the pieces dont add up….though the conspiracy theorist wants this to be a ten year Lex Luthor masterplan, not just a tragic “got in over his head/turn to crime for $$$” dime store novella.

Paul, this is just a note to express my sympathy for you in getting caught up in all this. I can imagine how easily it happened. Some very, very distinguished Brits were taken in by Mr Rodenstock. I also still have happy memories of drinking genuine Burgundy with you, Peter and Becky in the days when it was affordable and not worth faking.

Laurent, thank you for blowing the whistle. It is very sad that yours has been such a lonely role!

Howard, that was indeed on the experiences I referenced, though the restaurant was in Monterrey Park. I don’t recall any of the wines being opened before we arrived, but then again, it wouldn’t even cross my mind to think about it. That said, I can certainly think of a reasonable reason for opening it, but your explanation is equally plausible. I do recall the 61 Petrus discussion. I though that was kind of strange, I believe he was a partner at Goldman Sachs. If what you posit is indeed the truth, that is quite sad, not only for the invited guests, but several people at that table were among his closest friends.

Here is my note from that lunch: “78 Domaine Romanee Conti – RC – Methuselah – brown, cloudy color, light in style/appearance, complex aromatics, earth, Asian spice box, sweet, soft texture…subtle with a bit of tart acidity on the clipped finish… Beautiful perfume on the nose….otherwise advanced”

Scott, I attended at least one of the Rudy-hosted dinners you mention. It was at a Chinese restaurant, in Arcadia, I believe. At the time, it was hard for me to feel Rudy was being anything but generous. He provided all the wine, and he insisted on buying dinner for all. Nothing was asked of us, at least that we were aware of. I kept a list of the wines that were opened, because they were so (by label) so amazing: 1962 Moet Chandon Brut Imperial (Methusaleh); 1978 DRC Romanee-Conti (Methusaleh); 1945 Ch. Gruaud Larose (double magnum); 1976 B. Grivelet Amarouses (Princess Noura) (Methusaleh). There was also an unopened double magnum of 1961 Ch. Petrus, which one guest persuaded Rudy not to open by exclaiming, “why open that bottle for these people?” One or more of the bottles came to the restaurant already opened. The only bottle I KNOW at this point that came already opened was the DRC RC. I thought that was weird but assumed he had wanted it to breathe. While we were drinking the DRC RC, the guest seated to my right kept whispering in my ear, “this is fake.” I didn’t want to believe that as I saw no reason someone who invited us to such a dinner would knowingly provide fake wine. I, like everyone present, just said I liked the wine. In retrospect, there is no doubt it was fake. And in retrospect, it is easy to see we were being used as focus group to see if the concoction in the bottle was of sufficient quality to pass muster. I regret were used in that fashion.

Mike,
Do you own the rights to these posts? If you do, you may want to start a screenplay..this is good stuff. BTW I get all my Ponsot that I sell from Vineyard Brands via the domaine, the old fashion way.

Thanks for your thoughts in what must be a most difficult time Paul. I imagine that anyone who attempts to duplicate old wines must be an incredible taster.

Since I was not only the acting manager of The Wine Hotel, a business owned by Rudy, from 2008 to 2010, but since I also was one of his friends from 2002 or 2003 onwards, I obviously need to make a statement.

Under my tenure, the Wine Hotel was a storage facility with a small retail operation. The retail operation focused on current vintage wines from France and Italy, most of them under $150 a bottle, with a sweet spot in the $15 to $65 range. We are talking Burgundy, Languedoc, Jura, grower Champagne, Slovenia, Piedmont, Germany and the likes.

We did sell some of the wine Rudy had been storing in two of his lockers at The Wine Hotel, as well as some that he dropped off or had delivered. With two exceptions I have complete confidence in the wines we sold that belonged to him. I base this confidence first on the fact that I personally unpacked most of the wines from many unopened shipping containers or wood cases, found many packing slips and invoices attesting to their provenance, and second because these wines were quite frankly not the kind of wine that one would expect to be forged. The two exceptions I can recall were both sales to friends of Rudy’s. One was a single bottle of Bordeaux and the other consisted of a few bottles I believe were older Bordeaux and a magnum of white Burgundy. I only remember the magnum of white Burgundy because I had purchased it for the Wine Hotel myself, in France, from a retailer. I did not believe the wines to be counterfeits at the time and I know the magnum of white Burgundy not to be. I have not been working for The Wine Hotel for a while and have no access to its records. I am therefore not in a position to sift through to see if any other sales of potentially counterfeit wine occurred. If there are, they would be minimal. I mention these sales freely because any involvement in the sale of old and rare wine that belonged to Rudy now must be viewed as sale of suspicious wine, but old and rare was not the business The Wine Hotel was engaged in. I will further mention that Rudy’s lockers at The Wine Hotel contained only a handful of the kind of bottles one would suspect today to be classic targets for counterfeiting. An odd bottle from a serious vintage of Petrus, as well as one Lafleur, one or two La Taches, no large formats of such wines. Nothing particularly ancient. There were a few bottles and one magnum of lesser vintage Lafleur, 1995, but I had a chance to try one and thought it excellent.

The Wine Hotel was a small operation, with smallish sales. A large proportion of its income came from the locker rentals and the rest from sales of normal wine. It never made money as it was never capitalized. In fact it lost money, and Rudy had to put funds in it every month. It was a drain for him not a source of income. This, in part, is why I believed in his innocence: why would he continue to finance an operation that lost money while he was obviously facing financial hardship if it wasn’t to capitalize it as soon as the hardships were over and have a real, legit, wine store? I still can’t put that together with what has now come to light. Part of the original plan for The Wine Hotel was indeed to sell some of Rudy’s old and rare wine. I repeatedly begged for the inventory but it never materialized. There were excuses after excuses from him. For this I am today extremely grateful. I do not know why Rudy protected me and The Wine Hotel from his counterfeiting or even if he did so consciously.

Approximately two weeks prior to Rudy’s arrest, I was interviewed by two agents from the FBI who were (predictably) curious about my personal and business relationship with Rudy. I responded to all questions truthfully and told the two agents I spoke to about the sales I have just mentioned. I did not believe at the time that Rudy was engaged in counterfeiting but it was my intention to be completely transparent about anything the Wine Hotel had been engaged in. I will admit that at the end of the interview I told the FBI agents that I believed Rudy to be innocent. I would like to point out that The Wine Hotel is not named in the criminal case.

A part from the matters I have mentioned above, Rudy ran one of his auction purchases, though none of his auction sales, through The Wine Hotel during my tenure. I have personally never been to a wine auction, never bid at a wine auction, never consigned or sold wine at a wine auction except for a single bottle of 2005 Burgundy to an online auction site (for which I have provenance, I personally bought it in Burgundy, and have a receipt). I did position bottles for one photo shoot for the catalog of Rudy’s Cellar I or the Cellar II. For the photo shoot the bottles had already been pulled from Rudy’s Arcadia storage facility and I did not at that time enter his locker. A part from the two wine hotel lockers I was only once in another locker of Rudy’s. This was much before the buzz about counterfeit and I don’t remember seeing anything of concern. I also was present for a couple hours when John Kapon and his crew were checking bottles from Rudy’s cellar. They appeared to be doing a professional job. I did not at that time enter the locker Rudy’s wine was being pulled from. I attended one intimate pre-auction dinner for one of the two ‘The Cellar’ sales as well. I don’t believe I have attended any other pre-auction dinners and I have attended to the best of my recollection one, maybe two pre-auction tastings, but not I believe auctions in which Rudy was consigning. I believe I was at Cru in New York once with Rudy after an auction, but I met up with him there and was not present at the auction. I was at Cru a couple other times with Rudy but I believe that was after a Paulee, and the other time I think after one of the Romanee-Conti dinners.

Rudy and I were already on infrequent speaking terms when, over his frustration with me, and over my increasing frustration in lack of financing, lack of involvement in the business on his part, profound disagreement over how Rudy was refusing to speak out publicly about such matters as the Ponsot wines and Mr. Koch’s litigation, I cut my hours down to one day a week in the summer of 2010. Though I remained a signatory on the Wine Hotel’s bank account, and was given checks once a week to sign, I relinquished managing and buying duties then. Finally last year Rudy and I had a conversation in which we both agreed that it would be better for me to step out completely. I have bumped into Rudy once since. It was a friendly encounter.

Until I saw the pictures of what was found at Rudy’s house I did not believe that he was guilty. I had heard some rumors and confronted him with them but he always had a plausible alternative narrative for me.

Most of the wines I have tasted of his have ranged from convincing to incredible. At this stage whether they were all fake, mostly fake or partially fake, I do not know. The only hope I have is that my palate is not a total joke and that many of the wines I drank and thought highly of were indeed real. My serious Bordeaux education began with Rudy, and if I built that side of my palate on counterfeit bottles, it is not surprising that I could have been fooled by craftily made counterfeits, a base of good to very good old Bordeaux that simply wasn’t what it was purported to be. But when it comes to Burgundy it is another matter. I take some solace in the fact that the two old Burgundies that impressed me the most, two 19th century wines from Bouchard, came directly from Bouchard. But the thought that a huge proportion of the old Burgundies I had faith in could be total frauds makes me sick. I certainly used these tastings to boost my own credibility by posting tasting notes. Even though I was by no means a part of the majority of the big dinners or tastings, I was at several. In my defense I will say that I began to pull out towards the end of 2006 because dinners involving so many wines began to bore me. There were too many bottles in them that at the time I thought had storage issues but which I now must see as potential counterfeits, possibly made with a base of inferior or tired wine. I wrote and posted about my increasing weariness. All these wines competed with each other, the pours were too small for us to sit with the wines long enough to see a full evolution, which would most likely have brought out their flaws or their greatness. The last serious dinner I posted about was the aforementioned pre-auction dinner. The post on erobertparker.com was dated January 13, 2006. After that date, the Rudy-hosted dinners I attended were sporadic. The exception to this was the 2007 Romanee Conti vertical at Per Se which was not hosted by Rudy, but he is the one that invited me to it. I will also say in my defense that when Rudy and I were alone, he liked to pour me geekier wine, lesser appellations, than the big guns. These I do not believe to be counterfeit and this also contributed to my faith in him. I extend my sincere apologies to the wine community that I posted tasting notes that I thought important, that boosted my persona, but that could have served to boost his credibility.

I will say of Rudy that he is a brilliant taster, someone I have seen guess things in a matter of seconds. Our friendship started and was based on his incredible interest in wine and his incredible abilities as a taster. He was also more inquisitive about lesser wines than people like him who can afford to drink only the most expensive. I respected him for that. And I shudder to think that by our geeky talks I could have imparted knowledge to him of lesser wines that he ended up putting to a dark use.

I am saddened, sickened and in utter shock. I have extended a personal apology to Don Cornwell because a few years ago I wrote him a very nasty email after he first lambasted Rudy. I also apologize to the wine community if had any unwitting role in this horrible mess by posting notes or imparting Rudy any education that he could have used to counterfeit wines.

Mr Klapper

You are a recovering attorney so I appreciate your skepticism. You may very well be right. I certainly am not married to my opinion, at least I recognize where it may lay on the probability distribution. That said, there are some wines, like 78 DRC RC that I have only had a few times, two of which involved Rudy and one, was not, but to me, they were similar, save for one that came from a large format which was younger. What am I to conclude? Is it possible they were all fakes, sure. I don’t have an ass to cover here, I drank the wines, I wrote my notes and at that level they were never wines I could afford or would value at that price, but certainly glad to have tasted.

Have I been fooled by fakes? I am certain of it, but I have no way of knowing. But RK opened thousands and thousands of bottles over the last decade and I have to beleive the vast majority were legit. His involvement in the forgery of wines has cast an ugly pallor over everything he has done, but to think that this invalidates everything is too much.

That is how I feel about it. If every wine he poured me was a fake, that does not change the fact that the majority were wonderful to drink.

Cheers

Kevin, in reading my first sentence again, I can see that it could be construed as identifying you as one of Rudy’s wine friends. That was not my intention. Rather, I was attempting to build on your post. Scott, you were fingered as a duly respected drinker of Rudy’s wines.

Maureen, you are quite right that nobody deserves to be defrauded, whether by Rudy or Wall Street, but I do think that, if accurate research were possible, the average net worth of wine fraud victims would be hefty. Matt in Chicago, I think putting bankers in prison and seeking restitution for taxpayers trumps using scarce resources chasing con artists. I could not agree more with Dan’s “supply and demand” quip, and in my experience, hubris and big money most often go hand in hand in the world of fine wine. Maureen, I would not want to see your seminarian client defrauded, or anyone else. The points that I make are simply that more high net worth individuals have suffered significant losses via wine fraud than average folk (who generally lack the resources to buy old and rare fake bottles), and that I do not think that wine fraud should be a high priority of the Federal government. State and local enforcement makes more sense to me, maybe even tighter monitoring and/or regulation of auction houses.

Scott and Kevin, with all due respect (and I am sincere in that), the “but Rudy’s wines that I DRANK were legit” smells of CYP (the palate equi