Gallagher's Travels: Wine and Other Libations

Faking It

by Jennifer Rosen

$10 Rolexes don?t fool you. You know a pair of Faux-klies when you see them. But could you tell a vin de pays from a classified-growth Bordeaux? That?s what keeps wine counterfeiters in business.

Since the first time someone forged cuneiform on an amphora, wine buyers have been an easy mark and the crime a pretty safe one. There?s no end of suckers willing to pay $2000 a case for unknown liquid if they are promised yearly returns of 23 ? 150%. Even those far too sophisticated to fall for the Nigerian bank gambit walk into this one. It would defy laws of nature if criminals didn?t step up and deliver.

You might think high rollers would know their wine. It?s just the opposite. The wines most counterfeited are blue-chip French and small-production, Australian and Californian cult wines. As the makers of off-brand $50 bills know, you might as well knock off the pricey stuff. But the nature of the buyer is key, as well. He covets those wines for the prestige and assurance of their name. If he had confidence in his own judgment, he wouldn?t need to pay so much.

A status-collector gives himself away when he claims he?s never gotten a spoiled or corked bottle. Either his luck is amazing (I get about one in seven), or, more likely, he chokes the stuff down, telling himself that if this is an acquired taste, he?d better acquire it.

In China, fake Mouton is traded by the 800-case container. England has its Claret Ring, a network of wine brokers who specialize in bilking gullible British investors. An Italian scam, unveiled in March, had growers passing off table grapes as noble and selling them to coops, who quickly bottled the evidence. The government lost 4 million euros in tax revenues and more bad Italian wine flowed onto the world radar.

Another kind of fraud consists of adding things like sugar and acid to wine; rather ho-hum as scandals go, when you consider that even though illegal in certain appellations, at least it?s done to make the wine taste better.

In other cases, taste is irrelevant. Sometimes serious old wine is traded more like a stock than a drink; bought and sold for fortunes, over decades, centuries even, with no one ever drinking it. Hardly a year goes by that doesn?t unearth yet another cache from Thomas Jefferson?s Own, Personal Wine Collection. Auction records suggest he left as many unopened bottles as George Washington left unmade beds.

The war on fraud has brought us tamperproof capsules, laser- and acid-etched bottles, Braille labels adapted for security purposes, and neck labels impregnated with vine DNA, to be authenticated with a hand-held scanner. Let?s hope airports don?t get wind of this. It?s bad enough you have to take off your shoes and stand like a scarecrow without having your pinot wand-ed.

Of all the evil perpetrated by wine fraud, the worst may be the silly rituals it leaves behind. When the wine waiter ties his wrists in knots trying to keep the label facing you as he opens the bottle, it?s so he can?t palm the P?ignon and replace it with a can of Red Bull. That silver ashtray necklace known as the tastevin(Italics) was designed with facets to reflect candlelight in dark cellars where merchants inspected the clarity of wine they were buying. The bumps are irrelevant in a world of white tablecloths and electricity. Superfluous too, the clarity check, now that imperfections can be filtered out of the cheapest wine, while good ones often go unfiltered.

Then there?s the cork business. They do not hand it to you to snort, lick or chew on. After noting whether it?s a crumbling, decayed mass, you?re meant to check the logo and verify that someone didn?t refill the bottle with plonk after it left the winery. Restaurants continue this arcane tradition, I think, because we expect it, and we expect it because they do it. You could probably put the cork in your ear or up your nose if you did it with great confidence and panache. It might be stupid, but it wouldn?t be fraud.
http://www.vinchotzi.com
Chotzi@aol.com.

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