Wine fraud: Christie's, collector caught in the web

William Koch, a wealthy Florida collector of investment-grade wines testified that he bought a bottle of 1870 Lafite for $4,200 at a Christie’s auction in order to prove that it was counterfeit.

 

The ruling by U.S. District Court Judge Barbara Jones did not dispute the claim that the wine was counterfeit, saying "...the cause of his injuries was not Christie’s’ misleading statements but plaintiff’s desire to gather evidence against Christie’s,”  In effect, the collector is judged to be the cause of his own losses.

  

Unanswered questions

 

Left unexplored is how Christie's came to be accepting consignments of counterfeit wines in the first place, and from whom.  We can only comment that a wine product authentication program, like that offered by Applied DNA Sciences, would have helped any of the parties to this complicated matter, including especially Christie's who would have been able to conclusively test for provenance. 

 

In another wine fraud case reported by Canada's CBC, Ontario's liquor control board is advising that some bottles of a 2006 premium red Italian table wine are likely fake.

 

The LCBO says people who have purchased a 750-ml bottle of 2006 Negrar Amarone Classico should return it in exchange for a 2007 or 2008 bottle or a refund.

 

Bottles with the number AAA 09439731 are suspected of being counterfeit and not produced by the supplier.

 

A likely judgment in need of authentication

 

The board produced its "likely" judgement based on the bottle shape of the counterfeit wine, which was is different from the authentic. 

 

In fact, there are much more conclusive, and fail-proof routes to product authentication for wine.  For more, please see the feature article Luxury Wines and a Stunning DNA technology on this web site.