MIKE CLARKE/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
BOGUS
WINE
the rarest stuff in the world,” Kurniawan told the luxury magazine.
“But to have a $100 million or
$200 million cellar when I’m 50
years old doesn’t make sense. It’s
more about sharing and drinking.
And I’m really a drinker.”
Cellar II shattered auction records. Sitting on top of the auction world in 2006 was a young
man who didn’t hold a job, and
who was theoretically in the business just to make people happy.
Kurniawan overreached at another Acker auction in New York City
in 2008 by trying to sell 87 counterfeit bottles of Domaine Ponsot, a
blue-chip Burgundy. The winemaker, Laurent Ponsot, denounced the
wines as fake and demanded that
they be withdrawn from the auction. Everyone involved in the sale
professed astonishment. Kurniawan
himself seemed to shrug.
“We try our best to get it
right, but it’s Burgundy, and
sometimes shit happens,” Kurniawan told Wine Spectator.
Actually, nothing happened for
nearly four years. Besides the inability of wine buyers to really
tell a vintage classic from a normal nice bottle of wine, and the
complicity of some in the rare
wine business in the trafficking of
HUFFINGTON
08.12.12
frauds, the counterfeiters had another advantage: law enforcement
was in no rush to help buyers of
five- and six-figure bottles of Burgundy and Bordeaux. The FBI was
focused on terrorism. There were
also traditional priorities: organized crime and bank robbers.
Then, in a bad break for Kurniawan, Jason Hernandez, a federal
prosecutor with a passion for wine,
was assigned to the investigation.
Meanwhile, Kurniawan was becoming increasingly strapped for cash.
His luxurious lifestyle had
pushed him deeply into debt, ac-
John Kapon,
president of
Acker, Merrall
and Condit,
presents
a bottle of
Chateau
Lafite
Rothschild.