Avenue Vine

The other day, Sotheby's said it had been asked by U.S. prosecutors to provide information in a probe that is being headed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation in Manhattan and also involved Christie's International and Zachys (which owns a retail wine shop in suburban Scarsdale, New York, as well). At this point, just what is in the subpoenas is not known, but a few high-end wine collectors seem to be saying they got snookered.

The younger the wines, the less probability there is for fraud, even if a single bottle like a Romanee-Conti from a recent vintage may cost $1,000 a bottle. Fraud occurs mostly with older, rare vintages and, especially, with large-format bottles called magnums (1.5 liters, or two ordinary bottles), jeroboams (six bottles), methuselahs (eight), and nebuchadnezzars (20), of which very few are made.

Craving Rarity:
Joseph Bastianich, owner of Italian Wine Merchants in New York and partner with Mario Batali in the restaurants Del Posto and Babbo, buys wines from all over the world.

“Euphoria drives this market,'' he said in a phone interview. ``These big bottles can be worth $10,000 or $15,000 a bottle, so there's a lot of money to be made. The very rare wines that collectors crave -- like 1945 Mouton-Rothschild, 1947 and 1961 Petrus, and 1921 and 1967 Chateau d'Yquem -- are the most likely to be faked because they bring so much money. Nobody's going to fake a wine from 2002.''

The best advice for a neophyte wine collector is to build a relationship with a fine-wine store. A shop like London's Justerini & Brooks Wine Merchants, which opened in 1749 and now has more than 2,000 active accounts, including the royal family, stocks its wines in impeccably maintained cellars. The company never buys at auction because it cannot be sure of the provenance.

Direct From Chateau:
The London-based MARC Fine Wines, which runs the Greenhouse and Umu restaurants there and A Voce in New York, stocks more than 120,000 bottles for sale to the trade and private collectors and will buy from auction houses and private cellars. MARC's executive wine buyer, Jean-Marc Heurliere, said in a phone interview that he buys a great deal directly from chateaux in France.

“If I buy a '61 or '59 Bordeaux from the chateau itself, I can be sure it's the real thing,'' he said. “I may even call the chateau to ask about a particular bottle I am suspicious of because the glass itself seems oddly too heavy. And they may tell me that `Yes, in that year we used a different bottle.' I stay away from any suppliers I do not know personally, and I wouldn't touch any wine that has traveled from cellar to cellar, like from London to New York to Hong Kong.''

Heurliere looks carefully at the color of the wine (the older the wine, the lighter the color may be); the condition of the capsule (the metal foil covering the cork), which should look smooth and firmly attached to the neck; and the identifying marks on the label.

`En Primeur' Futures:
“The most targeted wine for fraud is Petrus,'' Heurliere said. ``I wouldn't touch any before the 1982 vintage, when the chateau started to use a special cut of glass on their bottles. Before that, it's very difficult to certify.''

He also encourages buying ``en primeur'' futures, with certified proof-of-purchase from the winery itself. ``That way, if you do wish to sell the wine later, you have absolute proof of what's in the bottle.''

Obviously not everyone can be on a first-name basis with a chateau, but many chateaux in both Bordeaux and Burgundy, as well as in California, are open to the public and may offer ``library selections'' of older vintages that have never left the estates' cellars. ``Buying a library selection is bullet- proof,'' Bastianich says.

If you are interested in buying at auction, look for certain telltale signs. An older wine's label should show some age, of course, and the gap between the wine in the neck and the lip of the bottle -- called ullage -- may indicate some oxygen has entered the neck. A very old bottle will have more ullage than a recent vintage.

Topping Off:
Still, some collectors will pay the chateau itself to open their wines, top them off with a little of the same vintage and recork the bottle. Indeed, a few chateau technicians even make the rounds in London and New York to perform such a safeguard.

The corks themselves will have the date of the vintage on them and should show considerable age, though laser printers these days can fake that, too. At auction, a lot's provenance will be described, including storage conditions and whether the wine has come from a winery or a single seller.

You also might check to see whether the wines are packed ``OWC'' -- in original wooden cases -- which may actually increase the bidding price for such wines. ``I only buy wines OWC at auction,'' Gearold Devaney, sommelier at Tom Aikens restaurant in London, told me in a phone interview. ``It's an extra telltale sign of authenticity.''

In the end, wine collectors should be wine drinkers. ``The best way to find a fake is to open a bottle of the wine you've bought,'' says Peter D. Meltzer, author of ``Keys to the Cellar: Strategies and Secrets of Wine Collecting.'' ``If you're suspicious of it, you can bring it back to the seller and have it tasted or tested.''

Be aware, though, that auction houses sell their wines ``as is,'' which protects them more against spoiled wine than fakes.

Source: “What You Need to Know When Buying Wine at Auction,” John Mariani, Bloomberg, March 15, 2007