Interesting read on the New York Times Freakanomics Blog about the selling on e-bay of empty bottles of wine. Good article but the part that fascinates me is the comments section. It is obviously not wine people who are commenting and their complete lack of attitude that anything nefarious is going on was quite surprising to this reader. I have heard many may stories about fake wine and re-filling of bottles. What is scary is that these commenters really have no idea it is happening and as it is known that, awareness, is the key to start fighting any problem. Especially of this scope.
Old wines like 1982 Lafite, as the article mentions, and also new vintages of Cheval Blanc, and even such low end Cote du Rhones being filled with Algerian juice are all alleged victims of doctoring. I have heard from numerous sources the counterfeiting of new release wine is the sleeping giant crisis in wine that is just waiting to happen.
What good would it do if all these fake wine rumors came true, or even a small slice of them? It would be bad news for wine. Real bad.
Saturday, June 27, 2009
Fake Wine Again
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5 comments:
At least they're giving nice tips on summer drinking. (red wine with Coke?, it had better be iced).
There have already been some large quantities of mislabeled Ialian wine.
I have heard young CDR and Bordeaux are HUGE potential minefields.
Young wines are so easy to fake- no one knows what they're supposed to taste like. I also love the guys who occasionally look for empty OWC's to "decorate" their basements.
For what it's worth I do have some empty older bottles around the apartment, both for decoration and to remind me of the drinking experience.
In particular I have a little display with 3 bottles of early 1980s Ridge on top of a little wine bar I have. Not only do I love Ridge wine, but their label is iconic and timeless, IMO.
I've never bought an empty bottle for decoration, but I could see people actually doing this.
That said, I do understand and respect the implications of empties on the fake wine market.
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