© Wine-Searcher

One of the wine world's most notorious counterfeiters has faked his final bottle.

Hardy Rodenstock has died, but W. Blake Gray suggests someone should check the contents of his coffin.

Hardy Rodenstock died as he lived: in the shadows, with news of his passing at age 76 from a long illness not seeping out of the small German town of Oberaudorf for nearly three weeks.

That gap is sufficient for it to be time to say: Good riddance to bad rubbish.

Rodenstock was a prolific wine counterfeiter who operated with impunity for two decades, and while he was sued in a German court, he was never arrested. He added a whiff of doubt to any older bottle of famous wine you might find anywhere in the world. It's a shame he never had a chance to sample prison cuisine.

Rodenstock, a former pop music promoter, did not invent wine counterfeiting. Nearly 2000 years ago, Roman author Pliny the Elder – most famous for his quote "In vino veritas" ("in wine, there is truth") – complained that cheap, fake versions of the popular Falernian wine were so prevalent that nobody could be sure they were drinking the real thing.

Before Rodenstock, that was generally the nature of fake wines: a cheap wine dressed up as something better, sold for more money, but not a fortune.

Example: Bernard Grivelet was the most famous wine forger immediately before the Rodenstock era. In the late 1970s he was convicted of selling 70,000 bottles of "Chambolle Musigny" and "Chambertin" that were actually filled with cheap wine from other parts of France. Dallas magazine reported, "The wines of Grivelet had already saturated the American market, with Dallas wine drinkers possibly paying $25 for wines worth only $4." That's the same scheme Pliny the Elder complained about.

Another common fraud pre-Rodenstock was to change the label of a famous wine from a lesser vintage, say 1967 Bordeaux, to a heralded one, like 1961. This happened everywhere because it was low-tech – as simple as scratching off a bit of ink. In the pre-Rodenstock era, victims would discover they'd been taken when the vintage on the cork did not match the vintage on the label. This still happens, and the consolation if you buy a bottle like this is that at least you're still drinking Lafite; just not the right Lafite.

Rodenstock created something entirely new. He built fake wines essentially from scratch, saving and buying used bottles. We don't know what exactly he filled them with because,unlike Rudy Kurniawan, he never had to face sentencing, but many people said they tasted good; years after the fact, Jancis Robinson wrote that she thought an 18th-century "Branne Mouton" had Port added to it. He used a printing company from which he had previously ordered music posters to create realistic labels on old paper.

The profits he aimed at were much, much higher than ever before. A few years earlier, Grivelet was churning out Pliny-the-Elder-type fake Burgundy for a profit, after distributor costs, of roughly $7 a bottle. Rodenstock created high-end fakes, notably magnums of top vintages, that he was able to sell individually for tens of thousands of dollars per bottle. Wine fraud experts believe many of these bottles are still out there on the secondary market, waiting for you to buy them.

"Rodenstock set a template for how a fine wine fraudster operates," said Stuart George, founder of Vins Extraordinaires and the Fine Wine Business Network. "He seduced people with extraordinary wines that, if considered with a cool (and non-alcoholic) head, would be highly improbable and likely to be forgeries.

"Rodenstock’s timing was perfect," George told Wine-Searcher. "His activities largely coincided with the 1980s boom in fine wine, aided by the strength of the dollar. Market and economic conditions were ideal for a lucrative fraud to be committed."

Rodenstock acted like a high roller, pouring his famous wines at enormous tastings for wealthy wine lovers and even critics. Robert Parker gave 100 points to a magnum of "1921 Chateau Pétrus," though Petrus believed no magnums were made in 1921. Jancis Robinson attended three of his tastings, and later wrote: "I have no idea whether the bottle of Yquem 1811, the famous year of the comet, served in Munich was genuine, but I assure you it was one of the most delicious liquids I have ever tasted, even if strangely raspberry-flavoured. Anyone who could create that has my respect."

People who really want entrance to such tastings – one at Chateau d'Yquem had 12 courses and 66 wines, most of which were probably legit – are less likely to raise questions. This was a lesson for Kurniawan, who first shot to fame in the US wine scene with the nickname "Dr. Conti" for the old magnums of Domaine Romanée-Conti he brought to such bacchanals.

"Perhaps Kurniawan looked at the never-indicted Rodenstock and thought that he too could get away with it," George said.



Rodenstock's most famous fraud, and possibly the only reason he was exposed, were bottles he claimed had been owned by Thomas Jefferson that he "found behind a wall" of a nondescript Paris wine cellar. These were the bottles at the heart of Bill Koch's lawsuit. The story was sensational, and the media attention caught the eye of skeptics – including experts at Jefferson's house Monticello – who would never have gotten involved over a mere case of '47 Mouton. Had Rodenstock stuck with forging 20th century Bordeaux and Burgundy, he might never have been found out.

Rodenstock never admitted guilt, sending angry faxes to media members who accused him. He settled with Koch out of court. Whether that stopped him from making more fakes, only he knows.

Post-Rodenstock, the fine wine world will never be the same. Rodenstock's legacy is doubt. The most highly regarded vintages of great wines continue to fetch good prices at auction, but for the skeptical drinker who doesn't believe in magic cellars with hidden doorways to the past, it may never again be possible to uncritically enjoy one of these wines.

Rodenstock never went to prison. We can only hope he has at least gone to hell. I hope he doesn't fax me from there.