Early in my work life, I was at a dinner with company executives. The head guy, feeling like a king, started ordering wine for the table. I was a young man and wine was alien to me. At least the culture of it. I knew nothing about it and I had no interest in learning about it. The waiter brought over a magnum sized bottle of wine and did the wine ritual for the big boss. He told me the wine was $1500 a bottle. It tasted like every other red wine I’d tasted to that point.
Later in life I came to understand that wine is mostly bullshit. A small group of people decide what is and what is not trendy and the prices are set accordingly. I actually got to know a guy, who is a member of the Court of Masters. His membership is all about making money in the wine business. I never believed for a second he knew anymore about the taste of wine than anyone else. He just knew all of the proper jargon that was used to impress people out of their money.
The thing is, people look at the price tag above all else. For years now I have bought my office manager a bottle of wine at Christmas. She likes to entertain over the holidays, so I go into the wine store and ask the clerk to give me a $100 bottle of French or Italian wine. I accidentally leave a price tag on it. Every year she tells me her guests love the wine.
There’s also the priest/expert factor. In spiritual matters, we rely on holy men to tell us right from wrong. There are rituals they conduct to instruct us on morality, absolve us of sin and bear us up under the weight of life. In practical matters, we look to experts to cut through the thicket of details and tell us that we need to plug the red wire into the blue socket. The wine business rolls the two together making the wine expert the arbiter of good taste and good character.
This story from America’s Paper of Record shows how high end wine is just high end bullshit.
An international wine dealer has been jailed for 10 years for fraud after selling fake vintages and cheating fellow connoisseurs out of tens of millions of dollars.
Rudy Kurniawan, 37, an Indonesian-born businessman, had been considered one of the top wine collectors in the world, becoming famed for his palate and ability to identify fine wines.
But it emerged he had been blending the contents of cheap bottles in the kitchen of the home he shared with his mother.
He then placed the blends in old bottles, stuck fake labels on them and claimed they were rare vintages, selling them for vast sums.
While selling the fake wines he lived a luxury lifestyle driving expensive cars and collecting modern art.
It is not hard to see how this worked. He is foreign so Americans naturally assumed he was exotic and international. He used the lingo so he must be an expert. His lavish lifestyle confirmed he was an international man. He presented himself as these people wished to view themselves. A classic con.
A judge in New York ordered Kurniawan to forfeit $20 million (£11 million) and pay $28.4 million in restitution to his victims.
US District Judge Richard M. Berman said: “The public at large needs to know our food and drinks are safe and not some potentially unsafe homemade witch’s brew.
“This was a very serious economic fraud, a manipulation of US and international markets.”
Prosecutors said Kurniawan had seven main victims, one of whom was the billionaire businessman and financier William Koch, who gave evidence in the trial.
After being sentenced Kurniawan said: “I’m very sorry for what I have done.”
Kurniawan had moved to the US at the age of 16 and will be deported after completing his jail sentence.
Jerome H Mooney, his lawyer, told the court Kurniawan had wanted to mix with rich people in California, where he had lived with his mother.
The lawyer said: “He was insecure, very insecure. He wanted to be them. He wanted to be part of it. Nobody died. Nobody lost their savings. Nobody lost their job.”
Kurniawan had become known as “Dr Conti” because of his expertise in the wines of the Domaine de la Romanée-Conti vineyard in Burgundy.
He was found out and arrested by the FBI after trying to sell 78 fake bottles of wines for around $700,000 at an auction in London in 2012. Other experts spotted mistakes including missing French accents on labels.
I’ll just note that no one ever tasted one of his wines and said it was fake. He was caught because he got sloppy with his label making. I’ll grant that much of his product was sold to people who collect wine. Still, an expert somewhere popped the cork on one of his brews and was fooled. But, they are always fooled. There is simply no evidence to support the claims of wine and food tasters, it is a fraud.
Remember that episode of Northern Exposure where Shelley accidentally breaks a bottle of wine worth thousands for a big party Maurice is having? And Eve helps her fix the bottle and re-fill it with a concoction of odds and ends and everyone is fooled and enjoys it with all that nonsense about notes of pears and apricots and all that carp.
That, in a nutshell, is modern wine connoisseurship to me.
P.S. I lie about decent bourbon starting at $25: Wild Turkey 101 is under $20 in some markets, and it’s sound stuff.
@thezman Ah, a wheat guy. I favor rye, but I’ll enjoy the hell out KC and MM if that’s what there is. In a restaurant, I ask the waiter what the chef recommends with the dish. Never yet regretted it. I guess that proves either that chefs know what they’re doing, or that any random wine is fine with anything. I’m good either way! Anyhow, if the waiter went to the trouble of remembering that stuff, may as well let ’em have somebody appreciate the effort. I’ve heard recently that Sam Adams has gone downhill, and hoped it wasn’t true.… Read more »
Nothing-special swill at astonishing fraudulent prices, from a guy who knows all the buzz-sounding words to say?
Let’s talk about mutual funds, appliance/automotive replacement parts, and “certain” so called “news” outlets and “comedy” shows, and “official” spokes folks.
@fodderwing nails it. Where I live, you’ll occasionally find something good as low as $6. $8-$15 is the sweet spot, give or take. Decent bourbon starts at $25 and diminishing returns start to kick in immediately. For $50 you might get a better whiskey, but nothing like twice as good. For $100, probably as likely worse as better — but I’ll never have that kind of money to waste enriching scam artists, so I’ll never know. There’s a price range that pays for some real craftsmanship, and a lot of the customers have some taste but hate getting ripped off.… Read more »
I’ve never been much of a wine drinker, so I order the house table wine at dinner. If that’s not available, I’ll get a cheap cab. I’ve never cared for white wine so I stick with a basic red. With beer, I have some odd ball tastes. I like Sam Adams, Sierra Nevada and others in that class. The boutique stuff does nothing for me. That said, I can slug down High Life if it is free and I want to get drunk. Now, Bourbons are a different story. I like Knob Creek and I like Makers Mark. I’ve tried… Read more »
Those who think they cannot be fooled are the easiest to fool.
I sure am no wine connoisseur, but in my modest experience wine tastes only as good as the food it is served with and as delectable as the company one dines with.
Too bad you weren’t on the jury (if there was one). That would have been interesting.
I have bought approximately four or five bottles of wine in my adulthood. Boone’s Farm, 1957, El Paso, TX. Swartz Katz, 1962, Schweinfurt, West Germany, and Rosie O’Grady, 1970, Carthage, NC. Just recently, I bought a bottle of cheap white wine for some receipt, and sthe left-overs were down the drain. Rosie was probably the best.
There’s more difference between a fifteen dollar bottle and a ten dollar bottle than you will find between the fifteen and one hundred. Any more than fifteen and you’ve paid too much.
Got introduced to wine in college in 1966. Wiederkehr’s Grape and popcorn in the dorm room of some friends of mine who shared my major. Fifty cents a bottle, I believe it was. Man. That was some good stuff.
All reds taste about the same to me. I have developed a taste for rieslings and such.