Sour Grapes Page #4

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into the auction world

and then Rudy really made them.

John really turned it into a fun thing.

He was the first one to like,

break it out.

It was like a giant crazy party

with an auction.

At the same time he was doing that, Rudy

came along, with this incredible cellar

and they kind of helped each other.

When Rudy was drinking California Merlot,

Acker Merrall & Condit was in last place

of all the auction houses.

When Rudy sold $35 million worth of wine

through Acker Merrall & Condit

in two sales in 2006,

Acker Merrall became the number one

auction house in the world.

He is the CEO of Acker Merrall & Condit.

This year he has auctioned off

more than $100 million,

the first wine house to do so.

John Kapon, joining me, so you can't

whine about that revenue, right?

Get it, "whine."

John, you're going to leave now,

aren't you? All right.

Well, it's been a pretty crazy year...

"There's not much that can be said

about this collection

"outside of the fact,

it is one of America's greatest.

"This is a collector

that actually inspects his wine."

To see all the magnificent wines in there,

I said, "Man, this is

a wine collector's dream."

I felt like maybe I ought to buy

the whole bloody cellar.

You know, the auction is

a complex transaction.

I mean, you get a catalogue,

it's 300 pages long

and you have two weeks

to make up your mind.

You may win, you may not win.

Some people...

They were selling massive amounts of wine,

and, you know, I don't know how John could

have inspected every single bottle

when he's selling

$30 million worth of wine.

The fakers like to fake

the very hard to find,

very old wines 'cause you give them

a much higher price.

One night my bulldog investigator,

Brad Goldstein,

found that I had just paid 25,000

for one 1921 magnum of Petrus.

In 1921 Petrus made no magnums.

You gotta go, big guy.

You gotta go.

You wanna go, you wanna go get Mommy?

Come on. Come on. Come on.

Bill kept saying to me, "I want to know

how deep this problem is in my cellar."

Where are the Ponsots?

Where are the Ponsots? I don't see them.

We had to find experts

who knew about corks.

We hired a guy who knew about labels,

capsules, glass,

and even looked at the glue, you know.

On an 1858 bottle we found Elmer's glue.

And Elmer's glue didn't come in

until sometime in the '70s.

Here, see if you can spot

the inconsistencies there.

You know, the more we learned,

the larger the epidemic became.

I have over 400 bottles

that are proven fake,

for which I paid $4 million.

I think what spurred Bill on

was when the auction houses told him,

as they say in French, "Tant pis",

you know, "Tough luck, buddy.

"You bought it, you bought it as is,

you're stuck with it."

For some reason, you know,

Freud can answer why,

I just hate being cheated.

In the wine business

there's a code of silence.

I'm not taking this.

We were fairly certain that some of

the wine bottles that Bill had purchased

from Acker Merrall were,

without a doubt, counterfeit.

Let's keep it out of the way.

He tasked me with finding out

the information on this Rudy Kurniawan.

I was given video of Rudy in early 2000

doing what was going to be

a food show on wine.

I almost fell out of my chair

when I first saw these videos.

Dude, I just opened a bottle on Thursday.

Now I feel bad about opening it.

Can I refill it and put the cork back?

The motivation behind the investigator

is to show the elegance of the hustle.

This is the catalogue of the auction

in April 2008 in New York.

The page to present Domain Ponsot.

And when you see the pictures here,

there is a 1929 Clos de la Roche.

Ponsot started estate bottling in 1934.

So, first of all, in the catalogue

it was already wrong and fake.

Everything here also is fake.

This wax we never used.

We never sold any wine to Nicolas.

We never had this vintage printed

outside the label here.

And Clos Saint-Denis, Clos Saint-Denis,

Clos Saint-Denis,

'45, '49, '66, and '71

and we started to produce

the Clos Saint-Denis in 1982. So...

And here you have the 99 points

from the expert.

And the expert is JK.

John Kapon, this is the auctioneer.

So, how can the expert be such

a good expert on wine

which costs $50,000 to $70,000?

Because he earns 20% on it.

When you find a fake wine,

it's a dirt on the integrity of Burgundy

and I wanted to wash it.

So, two days later I jumped into a plane

and I flew to New York.

I wanted John Kapon

to withdraw everything.

The stock market is now down 21%.

Dow traders are standing there

watching in amazement

and I don't blame them.

This could be the most serious recession

in decades

and that means life

as most Americans know it,

is about to change,

in some cases, dramatically.

Bear Stearns had collapsed

the week before the auction.

So, there was some question about,

what was going to happen with the market.

This particular auction

was just a wild affair.

We were all really, really buzzed

on really expensive wine.

Things got so raucous,

halfway through the auction, you know,

Kapon is banging his gavel saying,

"Shut the f*** up, guys."

You know, I mean this is not...

This is not Sotheby's.

7,000, 7,000, 7,000.

I'm looking for 7,500.

I happened to recognise a guy who came in

and sat at the back of the room,

and he was not part of the merriment.

He was sort of like Banquo's ghost.

Suddenly Ponsot stood up,

and there was silence.

He said, "Withdraw my wines",

and everything... John, like,

was at the podium.

It was a bizarre moment.

Kapon announced the entire 30-odd lots

were being withdrawn.

Parcel executed. Do they want two cases?

At the end of the auction I met Kapon

and I was asking who are the owners

of these wines.

The next day I met Rudy Kurniawan

for the first time.

We go to Jean-Georges.

I had no idea of what would happen.

He was just the owner of the wine,

that's it.

My two options was, he didn't know,

or he knew and he wanted to sell it,

and this is not nice.

But that's, that's... No matter what...

After "hello" and so on, I said,

"Look, now, you have to tell me

where the wines are coming from."

He's not going to have food?

You bought these wines, you should know.

I buy a lot of wines and...

"You know, we buy so many wines,

I buy so many wines", said Rudy,

"that I don't know where they come from,

I have to check."

That's why I love wine, you know,

wines, you can never tell.

You can never tell.

I had the idea that Rudy was doing

a lot of dinners and parties,

trying to have every client as a friend.

So, I said to myself,

"I'm going to do the same with him.

"Let him think I will become his best

friend and then he will maybe talk."

We had assembled a team

of international talent

who was actually a former CIA agent.

Sorry, guys.

Percy, you're looking for food,

I got nothing for you.

Percy, get outta here.

We had received some information

about his immigration status.

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