Can You Spot A Counterfeit Wine?

Consumers and collectors vulnerable to fakes.

May 8, 2018, Los Angeles, CA – Big money draws clever criminals who can be very good at separating you from your money. Counterfeit wine is no exception, and has bilked consumers out of millions of dollars. It's a simple scam -- bottle an inexpensive wine with a counterfeit label, or purchase old empty fine wine bottles, refill them with wine and sell them at a high prices to collectors and consumers.

All consumers, not just collectors, should be aware of the ease and simplicity of re-bottling any wine and creating a counterfeit wine - inexpensive to vintage collectable.

For example, a Chinese criminal gang selling fake Penfolds® wines bought generic wines for about $4 and sold them as the famed Australian brand for $42-$62, which was significantly cheaper than the $125 market price, reports ABC News. A spokesman for Penfolds owner Treasury Wine Estates encouraged customers to seek out authorized retail stores to buy their wines.

(Image: Real and Counterfeit Penfolds Wine and counterfeit Penfolds holograms - Guangdong Provincial Public Security Department)

This is the scam that wine counterfeiter Rudy Kurniawan was indicted for by a federal grand jury in New York, and sentenced to 10 years in jail. Kurniawan claimed his counterfeits came from his $35 million collection of rare wines, and sold for up to $100,000 a bottle. A 2016 documentary, Sour Grapes, claims that as many as 10,000 bottles created by Kurniawan may still be in private collections. Undoubtedly, the bottles will continue to be traded and sold.

Bill Koch, the Palm Beach, FL billionaire and brother of the political activists Charles and David Koch of Koch Industries, discovered around 440 counterfeit bottles in his collection and famously spent some $40 million on legal fees and multi-year investigations into the problem of wine fraud. According to Brad Goldstein, an investigative consultant who led Mr. Koch’s wine-fraud investigation team, Mr. Koch has won multiple civil suits and settlements from wine counterfeiters as well as auction houses and other collectors from whom he unwittingly purchased counterfeit wines.

Mr. Koch spent far more than he than he’s received in judgments and settlements, but for him, principle matters; “I hate to be cheated ” he told the Wall Street Journal.

No one likes to be cheated.