Speaker 1: Really now really.
Speaker 2: Really now really Hello, and welcome to Really Know Really
Speaker 2: with Jason Alexander and Peter Tilden, the number one podcast
Speaker 2: in America thinks it would be just great if you
Speaker 2: subscribe to this one. In this episode, you'll learn.
Speaker 3: About one of the world's biggest wine frauds who sold
Speaker 3: twelve thousand bottles of fake wine. Really no, really, You'll
Speaker 3: learn about the secretive black market for wine, the correct
Speaker 3: way to taste and authenticate wine, at how wine and
Speaker 3: organized crime goes together, like Shabilee and Brie, and now
Speaker 3: here are two guys who go together like Vanilla and Kale.
Speaker 3: Jason Alexander and Peter Tilden Now Really, really.
Speaker 1: Stu, I why do I always start? You start this one?
Speaker 4: By the way, you should leave that in if he's
Speaker 4: saying you start, what I always start?
Speaker 1: I always do. I always start because you always say
Speaker 1: to me, come out of the show on the start
Speaker 1: of the show. I've never said that. I've never said that.
Speaker 1: Do you feel it? Yes, but I would saying that's
Speaker 1: weird exactly. So here we go. I'll do you, I'll
Speaker 1: do you. Here go, ready, Laurie.
Speaker 4: Here's how Jason starts every episode. We have a very
Speaker 4: special episode today. This is special And I go why,
Speaker 4: and you go, I don't know, but I like calling
Speaker 4: it that.
Speaker 5: You know, you make up crap about me all the time,
Speaker 5: A I've never said that. I'm still reeling because you
Speaker 5: put out to America that I'm an underwhelming driver and and.
Speaker 1: Wow, that was some episode.
Speaker 5: I'm still hurt by that. I'm still all right, all right, fantasies.
Speaker 1: Around, Wow like a person.
Speaker 4: So this episode, you know, really there was another incident
Speaker 4: of wine fraud.
Speaker 1: And I have been.
Speaker 4: Fascinated with wine frauds since I saw the movie Sara
Speaker 4: Grapes Yes, which was about the huge wine fraud that
Speaker 4: was exposed.
Speaker 1: Not to be confused, by the way, not the Larry
Speaker 1: Davis right.
Speaker 4: This was one where there's a wine fraud and that
Speaker 4: one of the Koch brothers was scammed and he hired
Speaker 4: a private investigator and they found out that this guy
Speaker 4: was doing his own wines and I think was twenty million,
Speaker 4: thirty million dollars. Auction houses didn't catch it. It was amazing.
Speaker 4: So with it yet another wine fraud, we wanted to
Speaker 4: have on somebody who could kind of tell us what
Speaker 4: that world is about and why this fraud happened so often,
Speaker 4: and when you look up this person, they're it Marine
Speaker 4: Downey over is it over twenty years experience at this point, yes,
Speaker 4: over twenty years experience stands out as an independent expert
Speaker 4: on finding real wine, the foremost authority on counterfeit. And
Speaker 4: your name does come. It's like you're it. You're You're
Speaker 4: the big Kohona and this thing they call you the
Speaker 4: Sherlock Loans of Wine. One of the fifty most powerful
Speaker 4: women and wine. She specializes in on authentication and valuation.
Speaker 4: You have inspected hundreds of millions of dollars worth of
Speaker 4: wine and you advise the top collectors that sat among.
Speaker 5: A graduate of Boston University that you know, we're many
Speaker 5: people in my arms.
Speaker 1: I got nothing, I got no trials, know nothing, Grand Sea.
Speaker 1: Welcome to the show.
Speaker 6: Thanks so much for having me.
Speaker 4: All right, so we got to ask about the wine
Speaker 4: for it. So what Tower Grapes was about? What's the
Speaker 4: guy's named Karna.
Speaker 6: Rudy Curnea one, Okay.
Speaker 4: So my question about that and other things that we'll
Speaker 4: get to that that are baffling about the credibility of
Speaker 4: wine and the pricing of wine. That was a giant fraud,
Speaker 4: like twenty million dollars worth or more more?
Speaker 1: No much, how much?
Speaker 6: So the restitution and I did the reports for the
Speaker 6: DOJ that set most of the restitution. But he owns
Speaker 6: over twenty eight million dollars in restitution. But he sold
Speaker 6: at least one hundred million dollars worth of counterfeit wine.
Speaker 6: So my question is at the time, say that's worth
Speaker 6: like you know, ten times that today.
Speaker 4: So here's my question underlying that, with all the experts
Speaker 4: and the somalier's and the people who can describe wine,
Speaker 4: no expert picked us up.
Speaker 6: That's not true.
Speaker 1: Oh it's not true.
Speaker 5: I thought that it was starting research, go to researching.
Speaker 1: Starting and shut up.
Speaker 6: I was a friend of Rudy and the guys at
Speaker 6: Acker and you know, there was a small group of
Speaker 6: us in our twenties. But by two thousand and two
Speaker 6: I was running the wine auction new auction house at Zaki's,
Speaker 6: and Rudy decided that he wanted to be a player
Speaker 6: and he tried to sell some wine with me. Now,
Speaker 6: one of the things that always baffled me was that
Speaker 6: if if a kid were to walk into an auction
Speaker 6: house with millions of dollars worth of jewelry. The auction
Speaker 6: house would be like, all right, prove to us that
Speaker 6: you want it. Where'd you buy it? And he never
Speaker 6: claimed that. Like, his parents were major collectors and this
Speaker 6: was their collection, so he had to have bought the wine, right,
Speaker 6: So when he tried to sell this wine with us
Speaker 6: at Zakis, I said, okay, show many receipts, and he
Speaker 6: couldn't come up with a receipt. So a couple of
Speaker 6: years later, you know, he's selling thirty four million dollars
Speaker 6: in one two pre piece auction and I'm like, I
Speaker 6: is nobody in the world asking questions. The somoliers in
Speaker 6: New York, some of them who one of whom is
Speaker 6: a huge part of this story, worked with me at Zaki's.
Speaker 6: He knew Rudy was a crook, and for some reason
Speaker 6: all these guys went from like doing the right thing
Speaker 6: to wanting to be part of the party. There was
Speaker 6: way too much money and way too little education, and
Speaker 6: these guys all wanted to believe and it was Peter
Speaker 6: Pan in a bottle. It was also it was lots
Speaker 6: of drugs, It was lots of hookers, like.
Speaker 1: It is this is the Wolf of wine Street.
Speaker 6: It is one hundred percent.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, So they were all a lot of people
Speaker 4: were all in because they were benefiting in a big way.
Speaker 6: I said that Rudy was doing this. In two thousand
Speaker 6: and two, Bill Koch had had a suit, so I
Speaker 6: started working with Bill's investigators at OA and with the
Speaker 6: FBI and OA. Did nobody know. Of course they knew.
Speaker 6: We knew in two thousand and two. We knew that
Speaker 6: the guys at the auction house where he sold the
Speaker 6: wine were chandelier bidding and putting fake underbids in their book.
Speaker 6: It was an open secret. So and you know, don't
Speaker 6: talk to me about some lia's like really, some lias
Speaker 6: do not. Because you study wine does not mean that
Speaker 6: you know how to authenticate old and rare bottles. And
Speaker 6: even if you do know about old and rare wine,
Speaker 6: if you were to take a case of bottles and
Speaker 6: put them in a cellar in perfect condition, twelve bottles,
Speaker 6: and come back to them fifty years later, they're all
Speaker 6: going to be totally different. Think of triplets, Separate triplets
Speaker 6: at birth, right, bring them back when they're sixty years old.
Speaker 6: They're not gonna all a lot in common, right, So
Speaker 6: anybody that's like, oh, well, I can tell that that's
Speaker 6: counterfeit because I tasted it.
Speaker 1: There's no way. Yeah, yeah, well I love you. I'm
Speaker 1: like you, I'm laughing because there was I'm praying. You
Speaker 1: know all these stories, but I wanted to prepare. So
Speaker 1: Boss is our restaurant.
Speaker 4: I read that there was an incident in two thousand
Speaker 4: and whatever and two I think we're a table full
Speaker 4: of ex executives wine connoisseurs ordered a bottle, and at
Speaker 4: another table was a couple of celebrating like the first anniversary,
Speaker 4: and they ordered the cheapest bottle, which is called those
Speaker 4: twelve dollars a bottle, and the restaurant accidentally mixed them up.
Speaker 4: And the table of course that got the twelve dollar bottle,
Speaker 4: which was expecting this two thousand dollars I don't remember
Speaker 4: what it was. Well they you know, it has this,
Speaker 4: and it has a mouthfeel and it has a do
Speaker 4: And then when they pointed it out to the table,
Speaker 4: to the table, we've made a harble mistake.
Speaker 1: The head of the party went, you know, I knew,
Speaker 1: I knew something.
Speaker 5: Understand the story to begin with, if I've ordered a
Speaker 5: two thousand dollars bottle of wine. They don't bring the
Speaker 5: wine to the table, so I know Fleischmann's wine right
Speaker 5: from what they just what the guy pouring go. I
Speaker 5: assume this is from the two thousand dollars bottle. I
Speaker 5: don't understand that.
Speaker 6: I don't know hould that doesn't make any sense to me.
Speaker 6: I mean, if I'm going to order an expensive bottle,
Speaker 6: bring it over to the table, open it at the table,
Speaker 6: pour it at the table. Yeah, I don't want any
Speaker 6: because I know the Shenanigans can happen right like that.
Speaker 6: You know, hey, but God blessed the twelve dollars bottle people.
Speaker 5: A big fancy some shape and go over to the
Speaker 5: couple that knows he can see they're ordering you know,
Speaker 5: a la cards and he's opening two thousand dollars bottle
Speaker 5: of wine with and not questioning this whole thing, This
Speaker 5: whole story is me just so we're.
Speaker 4: About to test when they do, like the one test
Speaker 4: where they send three the same bottles of wine to
Speaker 4: be graded and one was not acceptable and one was great,
Speaker 4: and one was and it was the same wine.
Speaker 6: So I'm a wine judge. I do like the International
Speaker 6: Wine Challenge in London and text them and a couple
Speaker 6: other ones, and that can happen where one panel will
Speaker 6: throw a wine out and say it's no good, and
Speaker 6: another panel will give it a gold. So a lot
Speaker 6: of it has to do with the mood you're in,
Speaker 6: who you're with. You know, if you're tasting with a
Speaker 6: bunch of people that are duds or you can't stand them,
Speaker 6: or one of them is you know, annoying you or whatever,
Speaker 6: you can decide that that wine isn't good and another
Speaker 6: team who's getting along great is great. Like if they're
Speaker 6: playing jazz, my scores go down. You know, if they're
Speaker 6: playing like nineteen eighties alternative, my scores go way.
Speaker 1: Can I just say, okay, you know what. I'm so happy?
Speaker 5: I mean too, because I went from I'm gonna have
Speaker 5: nothing to talk to this woman about because I'm one
Speaker 5: of those people.
Speaker 1: I A.
Speaker 5: I'm not a drinker. B. I can taste nothing. You
Speaker 5: give me a glass of wine, I'll go either it
Speaker 5: has a fruity quality or a dry quality. And people
Speaker 5: are talking about I taste this, I taste that.
Speaker 1: I go.
Speaker 5: I taste maybe a grape and a lot of alcohol.
Speaker 5: To me, this is all a fesso. This whole the tasting,
Speaker 5: and these people that go, yes, I taste the oak,
Speaker 5: I taste the thing. I was in a I was
Speaker 5: in Israel. I know, we're going to talk a little
Speaker 5: bit about the Israeli wineries, but years ago, and I
Speaker 5: was with a gentleman, an actor who was in the
Speaker 5: wine business as well. And we're in this wonderful in
Speaker 5: the middle of the desert, this winery, and he's got
Speaker 5: glasses and we're all tasting, and I can't taste of God.
Speaker 5: And he's tasting. How I tell oh, I taste the Uh.
Speaker 5: There's a hint of cherry in this, And I think
Speaker 5: this must have been in a an oak cast because
Speaker 5: I'm getting some oak and he's going from glass to glass.
Speaker 5: And on the fourth one, I go, can I take
Speaker 5: this one? I'm getting a rattlesnake. And I think Shlomo
Speaker 5: may have urinated on this vine a week or cer.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And they're.
Speaker 5: All laughing, and I'm going, but that's I might as
Speaker 5: well be talking the truth.
Speaker 6: Realistically, so you can study it. It is a language.
Speaker 6: I've been studying wine since I was eighteen, you know,
Speaker 6: I studied for the Master of Wine, and in the
Speaker 6: Master of Wine You need to be able to taste
Speaker 6: not only what great variety or blend where it's from,
Speaker 6: you know, the vintage, the soil that it's grown in,
Speaker 6: but you need to say at what temperature it was fermented? No, yeah,
Speaker 6: in what kind of vessel it was fermented? And for
Speaker 6: how long? You can do it? It takes a long time,
Speaker 6: but you can do it. No, but dudes on Wall
Speaker 6: Street can't do that. When they're roice.
Speaker 4: You can say this dry ariage soil, it was it
Speaker 4: was it was.
Speaker 1: It just it was fermented in the bobo. Yeah.
Speaker 6: I mean so like a lot of so many blancs
Speaker 6: that are really have like really high acid and really
Speaker 6: primary flavors, those have been fermented in a neutral vessel,
Speaker 6: so concrete or steel at a cold temperature with highly
Speaker 6: rectified yeast strains. It does it actually pretty good?
Speaker 1: At Wow?
Speaker 5: Can I just say something. I'm guessing it takes a
Speaker 5: hell of a lot to get this woman drunk. Well,
Speaker 5: I'm thinking she can hold a couple of.
Speaker 6: Spit, right, I am irish. No, you do have to
Speaker 6: spit and and and and you got to drink a
Speaker 6: lot of water. And but you know, I want to
Speaker 6: go back to something you can tell the difference even
Speaker 6: if you're not a drinker. Somebody who is a Coca
Speaker 6: Cola drinker, if you give them a pepsi, they're going
Speaker 6: to be like w T right. So even if you think, oh,
Speaker 6: I can't taste you know, like my father used to
Speaker 6: always say, oh I can't taste wine. I put two
Speaker 6: glasses of wine in front of him every time he
Speaker 6: would go to the best one. Really really, so even
Speaker 6: though you don't think you can, I think it's more
Speaker 6: about learning the language of being able to wine taste palate.
Speaker 4: But then again again one after the other, where you say,
Speaker 4: when they show price tags, the price tag affects how
Speaker 4: they taste the wine, that this is a better wine
Speaker 4: because it's got a higher price tag. So the assumption
Speaker 4: is that, because I read in preparing for this, that
Speaker 4: there's so many things people say they taste, but even
Speaker 4: the best palate cannot taste more than three or four
Speaker 4: things that don't wind, that.
Speaker 6: That's impossible because well, so I have allergy. I'm actually
Speaker 6: allergic to alcohol. I learned this during the MW War.
Speaker 6: I know, so I have to blow my nose like crazy.
Speaker 6: I'm like, sorry, everyone, but I taste tactilely. So a
Speaker 6: lot of my perception comes from tactile So like when
Speaker 6: you think of the difference between milk, thig of cream,
Speaker 6: milk and water, right, you can automatically know exactly what
Speaker 6: I'm talking about that there's just different feelings. And then
Speaker 6: you just think of different textures. It's difference between silk
Speaker 6: and burlap, and those are ways that I would describe tannin.
Speaker 6: So you know, the the way that you that you
Speaker 6: approach tasting wine isn't just about the roses and the
Speaker 6: flowers and you know, oh, I fawn ran through the
Speaker 6: field after the dew. You know, it's not really that
Speaker 6: it is actually finding different things. But there have to
Speaker 6: be more than three or four because you've got aromas
Speaker 6: which exist, these arresters you have. You know, acid makes
Speaker 6: you salivate. Tannin pulls the saliva literally from your gums
Speaker 6: and dries your mouth out. Alcohol burns your mucous membranes,
Speaker 6: and you can perceive salty, bitter, sweet, sugar weighs heavier
Speaker 6: on your palate. So I mean, right there, just tactilely,
Speaker 6: you've got more than three or four.
Speaker 1: So God, if you bs, you're so good, you're so good.
Speaker 1: I mean it is. It's fascinating to hear.
Speaker 4: Do you go to a restaurant and watch people do
Speaker 4: stuff and go this is such a bull Look at
Speaker 4: table light, I mean where they're doing their whole deal.
Speaker 6: When people smell corks, I always laugh, like, why are
Speaker 6: they gonna smell the cork? Smell of wine? What's the cork?
Speaker 1: Smell the cork? You don't.
Speaker 6: Because you don't know what?
Speaker 4: Okay, what else? Give me other things? People do that
Speaker 4: to show off. That's all nonsense. God, I love that.
Speaker 1: And the next time somebody with a cork, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: go smell the wine. You don't get phot or spinks exactly.
Speaker 6: You can feel the cork and see, you know, if
Speaker 6: it's too hard or too soft, But don't smell the cork.
Speaker 1: What are you gonna eat the cork?
Speaker 6: Right? Thummest thing I ever saw.
Speaker 1: Oh. I just think that.
Speaker 6: People who wax and wane too poetic or sit there
Speaker 6: and spend too much time like, yeah, enjoy your wine,
Speaker 6: but shut up.
Speaker 1: Just drink it the beverage. Yeah, so I know.
Speaker 4: I looked up terms, Jason, to these real terms, and
Speaker 4: you say, if they're real terms, are not youthful.
Speaker 5: A youthful warm, yes, yes, Oh mommy, oh mommy is
Speaker 5: when it applies to wine. Who mommy is supposed to
Speaker 5: be about like a sort of a meaty flavor, exactly.
Speaker 5: I can't imagine it applies to wine.
Speaker 1: You want a meaty flavor, you do. You're a little
Speaker 1: bit of a freak. I can see drinks a lot
Speaker 1: and never gets drunk and likes leather and a wine.
Speaker 1: You know, I don't know. Salmon, salmon, it's a color. Oh,
Speaker 1: I feel like this is all. Don't touch me, don't
Speaker 1: hit me, don't hit me. Velvety, velvety. I've heard yes, nutty.
Speaker 1: Now do you have all intense? Sure?
Speaker 5: Jammy, Jammy, jammy. That's what I put on one night
Speaker 5: taste Moto.
Speaker 6: Yeah. A lot of New World wine is jammy and
Speaker 6: fruit fruit Uh huh.
Speaker 4: Tempting is a descriptor tempting, I guess cerebral.
Speaker 1: Cerebral they call wine if.
Speaker 6: You call wine cell that's like, this really sucks. But
Speaker 6: I have to think about it a lot, trying to
Speaker 6: find something nice to say.
Speaker 1: Yeah, contemplate same thing.
Speaker 6: Well, and you're a winemaker and somebody's like your wine
Speaker 6: is very cerebral like I don't want you to be
Speaker 6: I want you to see it's a delicious.
Speaker 5: I ask you a question, how much time could you
Speaker 5: spend on this computient?
Speaker 1: No, I just wanted because these were one on one
Speaker 1: site and you pull it off. This is this is ridiculous.
Speaker 1: You know, were you drunk and you know? So? I
Speaker 1: was watching a little bit of.
Speaker 5: Bill Koch was being interviewed by this and that was
Speaker 5: about the Thomas Jefferson bottles of the Foe.
Speaker 6: Yeah, but if I had, they're all faux. By the way,
Speaker 6: there's no real Thomas Jefferson.
Speaker 5: Okay, is there a bottle of wine from that year
Speaker 5: that if I opened it today would taste the way
Speaker 5: you wanted? I mean, I mean gross. You would never
Speaker 5: drink a bottle of wine that what's like? So the
Speaker 5: cut off more than x years.
Speaker 1: Don't drink it. Just look at it as a piece
Speaker 1: of history.
Speaker 6: So if there happened to be somebody who was working
Speaker 6: on the show who could google things, maybe they might
Speaker 6: be able to lock this up. But there was a
Speaker 6: there was some ancient wine that was found in the
Speaker 6: Middle East and it had been topped with olive oil,
Speaker 6: because that's what they used to use right before corks
Speaker 6: because olive oil keeps the oxygen out. And then they
Speaker 6: tested the liquid and it was still safe to consume, right,
Speaker 6: but it was nasty.
Speaker 1: Oh that But so is that basically with the Bill
Speaker 1: with a Coke brother? Is that? Is that? Is that
Speaker 1: because there.
Speaker 6: Are Bill's brothers, So Bill has the when you talk
Speaker 6: about the Coke brothers, yeah, those are his two brothers,
Speaker 6: Bills separate.
Speaker 4: So when you talk about, okay, the coke from the
Speaker 4: movie Coke, is that basically just so you can say
Speaker 4: I have this bottle that It's not about asumption, it's
Speaker 4: about historical history.
Speaker 6: Right. So here's a really interesting thing about counterfeit. So
Speaker 6: prior to Rudy Creneawan, there was a very famous counterfeiter
Speaker 6: named Hardy Rodenstock. And Hardy Rodenstock was big in the
Speaker 6: eighties and the nineties. So he's where I learned about counterfeits.
Speaker 6: Pardy Rodenstock made counterfeits that were not only to counterfeit wine,
Speaker 6: but they were all important years, you know, like eighteen
Speaker 6: sixty four, eighteen sixty five, and the Revolutionary War, the
Speaker 6: year that Abraham Lincoln. So somebody like a Bill Coch
Speaker 6: who collected wine and Americana is going to go for
Speaker 6: those kinds of years. So when I teach people about
Speaker 6: how to authenticate, these important years for the world are
Speaker 6: something that you look for. Somebody Sotherby's or Christie's did
Speaker 6: a big spent a lot of money and established the
Speaker 6: people who collect wine are the most likely to collect
Speaker 6: something else, at least something else. So people who collect
Speaker 6: wine rarely only electric.
Speaker 1: Artur're doing historical, historical stuff. Wow.
Speaker 6: Right, So Bill Cooke is collecting Americana. So for him
Speaker 6: that was part of Americana and it was realized because
Speaker 6: his Americana was going to the Elizabeth Gardner Museum in
Speaker 6: Boston and they're the ones that fact checked it. But
Speaker 6: it was interesting. I'd been trying to get a hold
Speaker 6: of him since two thousand and six for Rudy crniha
Speaker 6: wand bottles that he bought that I that I knew
Speaker 6: were just fake as could be so and he never
Speaker 6: responted no, but I ended up testifying about them in
Speaker 6: court for him.
Speaker 4: So when you're looking at the bottle of wine, whether
Speaker 4: it's historic bs or whether it's a real date from
Speaker 4: way back, did you do authentication of the label the bottle,
Speaker 4: how bottles were made at that point, where they were
Speaker 4: made at that point.
Speaker 6: That's exactly what I do. So and people are always like, well,
Speaker 6: do you toest the liquid? I'm like, no, because if
Speaker 6: you test the liquid, it's a twenty thousand dollars bottle
Speaker 6: and I'm testing the liquid now, now what you know?
Speaker 5: And or oh they haven't think called the rabbit and
Speaker 5: you can own it. You even have to open the
Speaker 5: court I know about wine a minute.
Speaker 1: Listen. Thanks for your contribution. Yeah, the carry on with
Speaker 1: your thought. I just thought you might not be aware
Speaker 1: you might have been a resur Thank you for that. Well,
Speaker 1: it's my pleason fit. I like the contribute.
Speaker 6: Yeah, you know, but nobody can. How do you test that?
Speaker 6: I mean you've got to have a control. So how
Speaker 6: many controls of nineteen forty five mouton are there? You know,
Speaker 6: there's a lot of counterfeit bottles out there. And allegedly
Speaker 6: somebody pete in the bat of the real wine. Wow, yeah,
Speaker 6: pissed off worker.
Speaker 5: I wonder if that guy in Israel would have tasted
Speaker 5: Does that make it more valume or less less of it?
Speaker 1: How much fraud is that? What do you think in
Speaker 1: the wine world.
Speaker 6: So according to the WHO, more than twenty five percent
Speaker 6: of all alcohol consumed in the world is illicit. So
Speaker 6: about twenty percent of wine is counterfeit in the fine
Speaker 6: and rare sector and the upper you know, echelon, we're
Speaker 6: looking at ten about ten percent. And what's interesting is that, So, yeah,
Speaker 6: I when when we authenticate a bottle, we look at
Speaker 6: the glass and the paper and the glue. You know,
Speaker 6: does the paper react to u V like because if so,
Speaker 6: you can date it to a particular time. But in
Speaker 6: the wake of the Rudy Crenea on fraud, most producers
Speaker 6: in the world went away from plate pressed labels to
Speaker 6: digital labels, and unfortunately, organized crime can buy a digital
Speaker 6: printer fairly cheaply. So now we've just got and and
Speaker 6: you know, if they get caught making counterfeit wine, nobody
Speaker 6: really cares. If they get caught human trafficking, they're going
Speaker 6: to go to jail. So organized crime has gotten into
Speaker 6: the game. And so the world of counterfeits has actually
Speaker 6: gotten worse, not better.
Speaker 5: So there's there's a screaming eagle wine. It now has
Speaker 5: an interactive authentication code that you type in or the
Speaker 5: phone number to call and it's you're gonna be saying,
Speaker 5: I mean, what does it does that work?
Speaker 6: I mean, if I'm this close to the bottle, I
Speaker 6: already own it, right, I have a problem in my hand,
Speaker 6: not an investment. So I've been working on a web
Speaker 6: three blockchain solution that where people can actually get the
Speaker 6: information online prior to sale, whether it's a primary sale
Speaker 6: or a secondary market sale, and the producers can actually
Speaker 6: track through the supply chain. The wine supply chain is
Speaker 6: one of the most opaque in the world. In the
Speaker 6: world because everybody's secretive. The supply is so limited and
Speaker 6: the demand is so great, and they are never going
Speaker 6: to make more bottles of the wine that they can.
Speaker 6: If a vineyard is as big as this room, it's
Speaker 6: never going to get bigger that by law, they can't
Speaker 6: grow it, especially in the old world. So supply is
Speaker 6: static and demand is growing, so the supply chains have
Speaker 6: gotten totally opaque. The gray market is huge, so producers
Speaker 6: can't even control where their bottles go. And anything that
Speaker 6: you can scan on a label just substantiate. It's a
Speaker 6: counterfeit refill, so you know, people are collecting empty bottles
Speaker 6: and refilling them and reselling them. So we got We
Speaker 6: got to address the solution before people actually buy. Nobody
Speaker 6: goes to the wine store and says, Okay, I'm gonna
Speaker 6: spend fifty thousand dollars. Today they do it from behind
Speaker 6: a desk. You know, they do it on the phone.
Speaker 4: So with organized crime involved now in a bigger way,
Speaker 4: does it make your job tougher or scarier or more
Speaker 4: fraught with problems?
Speaker 1: You know?
Speaker 6: It is interesting. We found a rattlesnake in our house
Speaker 6: in Sonoma the other week, two weeks ago, and it
Speaker 6: was right after I made a post about Rudy's back
Speaker 6: in your house in the pantry on a high shelf. Crazy, right,
Speaker 6: Apparently we back up.
Speaker 1: You were going in for some Chris gets.
Speaker 6: You opened the thing, and then my niece was and
Speaker 6: heard the rattling. And my boyfriend's a bit of a prankster.
Speaker 6: He's a Boston guy, huh. And you know, they immediately
Speaker 6: started calling it, tell us that rattlesnake is a prank,
Speaker 6: and I'm like, not a prank. Closed the door, you
Speaker 6: know it. We're on a big piece the land. So
Speaker 6: but in twenty five years we've never seen a snake there.
Speaker 6: So things like that make me wonder I have been
Speaker 6: physically assaulted, so yeah, and you know, if I had
Speaker 6: to just put my shoulder down, I ked taking the
Speaker 6: guy out.
Speaker 1: But does it concern does it you?
Speaker 6: I take bodyguards to some big, big tastings. But you know, hey,
Speaker 6: when it when my time's up, my time's up. You know,
Speaker 6: I'm just gonna keep doing what you do.
Speaker 1: Wow, that's pretty cavalier cover me. I'm interviewing work. Yeah, Wow, Marine,
Speaker 1: that's that's frank. You know, anecdotally, you and I may
Speaker 1: be now on the list. Is I'm not still doing wine?
Speaker 1: I have an open forum.
Speaker 5: Some other people here to point counterpoint kind of thing.
Speaker 1: Marine. Wow, Is there a difference I should.
Speaker 5: Care about between a thirty dollars bottle of wine and
Speaker 5: a two hundred dollars bottle of wine? But is there
Speaker 5: a value difference, an experiential difference that justifies that change
Speaker 5: in price, or do you get just as much joy
Speaker 5: for you know, is everything you're going to get from
Speaker 5: the two hundred dollars bottle available in a thirty dollars ride?
Speaker 6: So a car will get you from point A to
Speaker 6: point B, whether you're going to spend more money and
Speaker 6: get an audi or more money and get a Bugatti.
Speaker 6: Is really the question, like, what are your priorities? I
Speaker 6: don't drink a whole lot of twenty dollars bottles of wine.
Speaker 6: Actually that's what I do so many on blanc. But
Speaker 6: for the most part, I would prefer to have a
Speaker 6: gin and soda and wait for good wine. For people
Speaker 6: who don't, who are not looking for the difference, if
Speaker 6: I put a twenty dollar bottle in a two hundred
Speaker 6: dollars bottle in front of you, you would be able
Speaker 6: to tell you would you would? You would even Yeah?
Speaker 5: And so for someone who's looking for that experience, the
Speaker 5: price is absolutely justified, hundred percent make such.
Speaker 1: I have to say I have.
Speaker 5: I don't know if you know this, Peter, we have
Speaker 5: a healthy crop of grapes in my backyard.
Speaker 1: What am I doing? I don't know. What do I
Speaker 1: have to do? Are you really pitching your own?
Speaker 6: Start squashing?
Speaker 1: I probably got enough to make a dozen bottles. Can
Speaker 1: we make some money on his backyard?
Speaker 5: What I mean is that you can't just take any
Speaker 5: jam I mean, can anybody just take their backyard crape
Speaker 5: and cross them and go whoopee?
Speaker 1: I mean a wine?
Speaker 6: Yeah, I mean they do it in prison.
Speaker 1: They but yeah, well I've got a leg out. How
Speaker 1: many bottles? So, how many bottles?
Speaker 4: I always look at vineyards, like when I go to
Speaker 4: another country my wife and I'll see a vineyard and
Speaker 4: it looks like a hillside with the stuff on there.
Speaker 4: How many bottles of wine can you grow there to
Speaker 4: make it worthwhile? How much land do you have to
Speaker 4: have to produce enough bottles that you're making money and
Speaker 4: it's profitable.
Speaker 6: Well, I mean it depends where there is. I mean,
Speaker 6: you know, Roman e Kanti is a tiny vineyard, and
Speaker 6: but those bottles hit and they sell wholesale for eighty
Speaker 6: five hundred each and as soon as they hit the
Speaker 6: market their twenty eight thousand. So you can make Yeah.
Speaker 6: So I mean I don't know you could you could
Speaker 6: have some you know, some ja estate.
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, yeah, that's right. It's really fascinating.
Speaker 5: This is going to take us into like the you know,
Speaker 5: bigger thoughts about our subject today.
Speaker 1: But the people.
Speaker 5: Who are getting ripped off for the most part in
Speaker 5: this are getting ripped off because they're able to buy
Speaker 5: extremely luxurious They're in a luxury market for the most part,
Speaker 5: are they not.
Speaker 6: A lot of people say no, So the people that
Speaker 6: really that make me really sad are like this guy
Speaker 6: in Copenhagen and I went out and he'd been collecting
Speaker 6: for like twenty years, and he had collected all of
Speaker 6: the major vintages of his father's life, the year he
Speaker 6: graduated from college, the year he met his mother, the
Speaker 6: year he got married, each one of his siblings' birth years,
Speaker 6: and they were going to take those bottles back to
Speaker 6: the producer and enjoy them with the producer. And most
Speaker 6: of them were counterfeit, And so he was not robbed
Speaker 6: of money, that's not the important part. He was robbed
Speaker 6: of that authentic of that experience.
Speaker 5: I feel like, and I felt a little of this
Speaker 5: watching some of the documentaries or I went listen. I'm
Speaker 5: not happy that these people are being ripped off. I
Speaker 5: don't condone that at all. But I'm also kind of
Speaker 5: like caviat Em there, man, I mean, you know, you're
Speaker 5: when I hear somebody is out forty eight million from
Speaker 5: their bogus wine purchases, I go, well, you know what,
Speaker 5: maybe that forty eight million could have gone to some
Speaker 5: other things.
Speaker 6: Well, and also you know, at the time, at the
Speaker 6: point that you're getting ripped off, for twenty million bucks, Like, dude,
Speaker 6: get an expert. Would you really buy that much art?
Speaker 6: Come on?
Speaker 4: Usually what we do after yes is expand the topic
Speaker 4: of it. We're going to go to fashion and luxury,
Speaker 4: but we'll do it with you here. So are same
Speaker 4: thing as far as authenticity. But what's really interesting is
Speaker 4: I started, I was going to compare it to the
Speaker 4: fashion industry, and I started wondering why people buy luxury,
Speaker 4: and the luxury market has exploded. Almost thirty percent of
Speaker 4: people who buy luxury make under fifty thousand dollars a
Speaker 4: year and can't afford it, and they want it because
Speaker 4: of the authenticity and how it makes them feel. There's
Speaker 4: that endorphrom connection which is really amazing.
Speaker 6: And that's certain people. And you know what's interesting is
Speaker 6: that there was a very interesting study done in Australia
Speaker 6: and women who wear fake bags and fake watches tend
Speaker 6: to cheat more.
Speaker 4: Often because there it's not about authenticity, yes, correct, And
Speaker 4: the weird thing about that then you look at the
Speaker 4: role models that these people look at, Zuckerberg, Steve Jobs,
Speaker 4: all these guys wear T shirts, jeans, and hoodies.
Speaker 1: So the wealthy are about access.
Speaker 5: Ye, an interesting vantage point because my wife used to
Speaker 5: work for a very high end fashion design company and
Speaker 5: in fact, part of her job was, you know, colors
Speaker 5: would come in and they'd have to name the color.
Speaker 5: Can't be a blue, you can't be a blue sweater.
Speaker 5: It has to be a you know, a coral dream
Speaker 5: or it has to be a whatever.
Speaker 6: Well, you have somebody who can look up new terms, right.
Speaker 5: But you know, I know from from her experience in
Speaker 5: that that you know, a sweater would it would cost
Speaker 5: them eighty dollars to bring it into the into the
Speaker 5: studio and it would go out to retail at three
Speaker 5: thousand dollars. And who buys a three things now as
Speaker 5: a sweater? I go, maybe there's a sweater that is,
Speaker 5: you know, if it's really a great looking sweater and
Speaker 5: you need a sweat.
Speaker 1: But there are fashion I see high end.
Speaker 5: We all see the fashion shows where every out on
Speaker 5: that unway is like thousands and thousands of dollars and
Speaker 5: there are nine people in the world that can wear it.
Speaker 4: But those are the statements and the really interesting thing
Speaker 4: I want to say before we go on this topic, though,
Speaker 4: the really interesting is young people into thirty though with
Speaker 4: fashion now and brands there's a secondary market, there's a
Speaker 4: resale market, so there's another there's a whole other element
Speaker 4: to that that we never had before, where you can
Speaker 4: get something by it and then flip it and make
Speaker 4: make money on it.
Speaker 1: Whatever.
Speaker 4: Let's go to GOOGLEHNM though, and see if google Heim
Speaker 4: looked up your the stuff that you kind of threw
Speaker 4: out there and said, maybe you'd have a guy who.
Speaker 1: God Google is. Yeah, google Heim, we got a lot
Speaker 1: to talk about. Extra be as quick as I can't.
Speaker 7: As you said, there is a one thousand, seven hundred
Speaker 7: year old wine bottle sealed, still drinkable and actually not
Speaker 7: from Israel.
Speaker 1: It was discovered in.
Speaker 7: A tomb of a Roman noble in Sayer, German in
Speaker 7: eighteen sixty seven. There was the wine, the olive oil,
Speaker 7: as we said, and then there was wax in above.
Speaker 1: And they said, I got it. Hap they expected to
Speaker 1: be nutting and it's still drinkable. How do they know
Speaker 1: you're gonna prove me wrong.
Speaker 7: There's actually a debate going on whether they should open
Speaker 7: it up and and and try it or just you know,
Speaker 7: deal with it whatever.
Speaker 5: But they you know, again, I say, the rabbit then
Speaker 5: go right through the oil, right through the corn going
Speaker 5: through the Jason.
Speaker 1: She already said that'stically. Oh what does she know?
Speaker 4: All of a sudden, you're vi there you got your
Speaker 4: backyard rabbit, all right, all right, yeah go ahead.
Speaker 1: Damn I'm saying, bar be it for me to back
Speaker 1: up Peter.
Speaker 7: But Peter is one hundred percent right with the Balthazar story,
Speaker 7: according to the New York Post. And I think at
Speaker 7: decanter dot com, I'm hoping that's more reliable than.
Speaker 1: That the cancer dot com than New York.
Speaker 5: I thought that was a totally different site. I really
Speaker 5: thought that was where you go when you have a
Speaker 5: bar mitztray holiday services.
Speaker 8: So yeah, so apparently the rest legit wine wine is
Speaker 8: I misread it was a It was a two thousand
Speaker 8: dollars moot on nineteen eighty nine.
Speaker 7: Yeah, yeah, and they had put that in the eighteen
Speaker 7: dollars wine and identical to Cantors, so they didn't have
Speaker 7: the bottles to compare. And of course it was nobody.
Speaker 7: Nobody noticed and tell you know, but.
Speaker 1: That couple of the young pem tell you whatever.
Speaker 5: Bottle of wine and except it at the table and
Speaker 5: at the canter.
Speaker 1: Because you would never get your you would never get
Speaker 1: your two the canter.
Speaker 6: No, the deal is you don't can't like anything unless
Speaker 6: it's brand.
Speaker 1: Now, oh look at that. So how did so?
Speaker 4: How did bosses are one of the top restaurants not
Speaker 4: know that? Was that their stick?
Speaker 6: And you're not to what the eye roll is saying?
Speaker 4: No, no, no, she said, it's saying she said, I
Speaker 4: don't know more rattlesnakes on shelves.
Speaker 1: I don't need it yet. I don't need Yeah, I
Speaker 1: got it, I got it, I got it.
Speaker 7: I got bark Zuckoper hoodies actually cost about two thousand pop.
Speaker 1: Logos on it.
Speaker 7: Yes, but there's still two thousand pop.
Speaker 4: I understand. But other people who are buying Lucky Feet
Speaker 4: when I.
Speaker 5: Put a logo on, it's you're paying for the labor.
Speaker 1: It's one more thing.
Speaker 7: And I'll get out of get out of the way
Speaker 7: the first.
Speaker 1: And wait, I love that he's part of the show.
Speaker 1: And then I'll get out of your way. Like you're like, okay, thanks,
Speaker 1: you know what can I can I just say something?
Speaker 1: I just say something. You always wrong. Oh, I don't
Speaker 1: want to say why we were noticed. I never do that.
Speaker 1: Tell me that you were my advocate.
Speaker 4: Thank you and that's because Laurie is making a face
Speaker 4: at me like I'm gonna I'm going to wrestle you
Speaker 4: to the ground if you keep talking.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes she does that, she texts me. But and
Speaker 1: this is a happy show behind the scenes. Let the
Speaker 1: man talk. Companies are don't showing who we really are. No,
Speaker 1: I beg I beg her.
Speaker 7: One of the first no wine was made over nine
Speaker 7: thousand years ago.
Speaker 1: And guess where it was? Uh center the orange everything,
Speaker 1: I'll just do again China.
Speaker 7: Now, of course there are no bottles or anything like
Speaker 7: that of drinkable.
Speaker 1: Of wine level.
Speaker 7: There was odd you know, vessels or whatnot, and they.
Speaker 1: Could Yeah, it was a cookie.
Speaker 7: It was a mixture fermented drink of rice, honey and
Speaker 7: hawthorn fruit or break So was it?
Speaker 5: That actually sounds very that sounds quite nice. Here's all
Speaker 5: I want to say. Do you do you collect any luxuriums?
Speaker 5: Are you a luxury purchasing No? Neither am I.
Speaker 1: And we're the logan.
Speaker 5: Here's how I here's why I think all all this stuff.
Speaker 5: I think it's never the value of the thing. It's
Speaker 5: only what we attached to the thing. Of course, it
Speaker 5: is that sounds all about I just I just had
Speaker 5: an epiphany. Don't say if that was Excuse me, pretend
Speaker 5: I didn't edit that out.
Speaker 1: Not really, but yeah.
Speaker 5: So my parents, when I was a young man, had
Speaker 5: a painting in our home that absolutely everybody was fascinated
Speaker 5: by drawn to It was about a two foot by
Speaker 5: three foot painting on paper.
Speaker 1: It was an abstract piece.
Speaker 5: It had a kind of an oriental feel to it
Speaker 5: in that it almost looked like letters of some Asian language.
Speaker 5: It was a beautiful sort of electric cobalt blue that
Speaker 5: it looked like the artist had drawn a palette knife
Speaker 5: or some sort of implement into and people would ask
Speaker 5: who was.
Speaker 1: The artist, Where did you get this? What was the value?
Speaker 5: And my parents would talk about that they had this
Speaker 5: in an auction house, it was actually one of the
Speaker 5: most expensive items they'd ever bought, that it was a
Speaker 5: young and unknown artist, and they would go on and
Speaker 5: on and on, and people would not only be interested,
Speaker 5: but on some occasions would say, if.
Speaker 1: You're ever willing to part with that, I'd be willing
Speaker 1: to buy that. You know.
Speaker 5: This was a finger painting I did in kindergarten of
Speaker 5: my house, and the tree in the backyard that my
Speaker 5: parents would spin this horseship, and nobody didn't think that
Speaker 5: it had the value that they say.
Speaker 4: So people project, Look, we feel like we need expertise.
Speaker 4: There's chaos in the world. We need experts because experts
Speaker 4: make us feel better about the chaos. They assign all
Speaker 4: kinds of stuff and rules, et cetera to make it
Speaker 4: make more sense.
Speaker 1: I was read like I said.
Speaker 6: We can also save you a lot of money, though,
Speaker 6: and you can.
Speaker 4: Say, and you were really I got to tell you, Maureene,
Speaker 4: you were really impressive, amazingly impressive about that world and
Speaker 4: knowing the world. There's so much more to it than
Speaker 4: just assigning value and and the bs that.
Speaker 1: Goes along with So thank you, thank you.
Speaker 6: Thank you for having me.
Speaker 5: Thank you everybody, and uh, let's give it over to
Speaker 5: ours certainly drunk announcer.
Speaker 6: Noah now really, really, now really.
Speaker 3: That's another episode of really, no really comes to a close.
Speaker 3: I know you're wondering, who are the largest consumers of wine? Well,
Speaker 3: I'll give you the answer in just a moment, but
Speaker 3: first let's thank our guest, Maureen Downey Sherlock Holmes of Wine.
Speaker 3: Follow Marine Downey on Instagram, at exite veno and on
Speaker 3: the web at Chi Consulting dot com and Winefraud dot com.
Speaker 3: You can find us online at really No Really dot com.
Speaker 3: We're also on Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, and threads, and Really
Speaker 3: No Really podcast. Please check out our full episodes on YouTube.
Speaker 3: Hit that subscribe button and tick that bell so you're
Speaker 3: updated when we release new videos, and thank you for listening, subscribing,
Speaker 3: and sharing the show. We released new episodes every Tuesday,
Speaker 3: so make sure to follow us on the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 3: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And now
Speaker 3: the world's largest wine consumers per person are reportedly the
Speaker 3: residents of Vatican City, with each person drinking around nineteen
Speaker 3: and a half gallons per year. Didn't know that the
Speaker 3: College of Cardinals was big on ragers, but you'll learn
Speaker 3: something new every day. Really No Really is a production
Speaker 3: of iHeartRadio and Blase Entertained flock a