The Man Who Duped Millionaires Into Paying Big Bucks For Fake Wine 
 
 Enlarge this image iStockphoto iStockphoto 
 
 He was the man with "the nose of a blood hound," as one wine critic once put it. 
 
 Rudy Kurniawan was once the toast of the fine-wine world, renowned for his ability to find some of the rarest — and priciest — wines in the world. 
 
 He was also, prosecutors alleged, a fraud who duped some of the country's wealthiest wine purchasers with counterfeit bottles of wine that he manufactured in his home laboratory. 
 
 And on Wednesday, a Manhattan jury agreed, finding Kurniawan guilty of fraud in connection with selling counterfeit wines and of defrauding a finance company. 
 
 The sensational trial began Dec. 9 in a Manhattan federal court. Prosecutors have argued that Kurniawan used his exceptional palate to blend together younger wines with older French wines of poor vintage. He then slapped counterfeit labels on the bottles, prosecutors say, and passed them off as some of the rarest wines on Earth. When these bottles turned up at auctions, the excitement of coming across them often overshadowed bidders' skepticism of whether they were the real thing. 
 
 Among those who believed they were duped is billionaire industrialist Bill Koch — yes, a brother to those Kochs — who said he spent $2.1 million on 219 bottles of Kurniawan's wine. 
 
 Born in Indonesia but residing in California, Kurniawan began turning heads in the fine-wine scene around 2002, winning over sommeliers, wine critics and auctioneers with his palate and his generosity. He often footed the bill at restaurants, where he poured thousands of dollars of wine from his personal collection for his friends. 
 
 "I've never known him not to bring a bottle," testified Truly Hardy, director of auction operations for Acker Merrall & Condit. 
 
 Around 2004, prosecutors say, Kurniawan began passing off his fake wines. Last week, both Koch and Laurent Ponsot, of top Burgundy winemaker Domaine Ponsot, testified that they had long suspected that Kurniawan's wares weren't quite what they seemed. Ponsot told jurors that he became suspicious of Kurniawan in 2008, after the collector consigned to auction dozens of bottles of Domaine Ponsot wine of a vintage that had never existed. 
 
 Enlarge this image toggle caption Stan Honda/AFP/Getty Images Stan Honda/AFP/Getty Images 
 
 Kurniawan was arrested in March 2012. Among the colorful evidence the FBI seized from his home are stacks upon stacks of rare French wine labels that Kurniawan allegedly forged using a laser printer. 
 
 But the central mystery for oenophiles has been slower to unravel: What types of wines might Kurniawan have actually poured into those bottles? 
 
 And is it even possible to imitate the taste of, say, a rare half-century-old bottle from Bordeaux? One expert says yes, but not without some very old wine mixed in. 
 
 "One of the tricks is having some old wine character" — which you can't get without including aged wine in the blend, says Andrew Waterhouse, a wine chemist and professor of oenology at the University of California, Davis. 
 
 The "old wine character" might not always strike the casual drinker as desirable. For example, if a bottle of Bordeaux purports to be more than two decades old, he says, its contents should have the distinctive, herbaceous aroma of canned asparagus. 
 
 "When you're tasting a rare, old wine, that's part of the deal," Waterhouse says. 
 
 Kurniawan likely had a lot of unremarkable old wine at his disposal. 
 
 This week, British wine expert Michael Egan inspected invoices addressed to Kurniawan, which included a 2007 order for 904 old bottles of Burgundy. The bottles are cheap by Kurniawan's standards (about $60), and the particular 1970s vintages listed are "very ordinary to poor," Egan testified. When asked how many bottles of the Burgundy he'd recommend to his own clients (who include Koch), Egan answered dryly: "Zero... unless they were cooking with it." 
 
 The prosecution's claim that Kurniawan used young California wines in his counterfeits doesn't surprise Waterhouse. He points out that the finest vintages in France correspond historically with warmer summers. Climatic conditions are similarly favorable in California wine country, where almost every summer is dry and warm. 
 
 "Of course, you have to use wines of high quality," Waterhouse adds, but many of the California bottles presented as evidence are "fantastic." He points to a 2006 bottle of Marcassin, a California pinot noir seized from Kurniawan's house. Its $200 price tag isn't exactly cheap, but it is much less than the thousands of dollars that Kurniawan's bottles fetched at auction. 
 
 Ironically, many of Kurniawan's artful fakes were probably never sipped or even opened. Wine collectors often view rare bottles as investments or trophies to be displayed. 
 
 As for Kurniawan's famous palate? Sitting in federal court, he could be seen nursing it with a steady supply of Mentos, Altoids and M&Ms. ||||| Please support our site by enabling javascript to view ads. 
 
 Renowned wine collector Rudy Kurniawan forged some of the finest vintages in the world, a series of French experts told his New York fraud trial Thursday. 
 
 The 37-year-old Kurniawan, once considered one of the top-five wine collectors in the business, faces up to 40 years in jail if convicted of wire and postal fraud. 
 
 Born in Indonesia, he had also been living illegally in the United States since 2003 when his asylum bid was rejected. 
 
 Kurniawan rose rapidly to the top of his profession thanks to his exceptional palate, capable of identifying the finest wines, and spent millions of dollars each year. 
 
 But prosecutors say he sold ordinary wine that he blended in his kitchen "laboratory" and re-bottled to masquerade as vintage wines worth thousands of dollars. 
 
 Laurent Ponsot, of the acclaimed Domaine Ponsot winery in France, said he was alerted by email two days before an April 2008 auction in New York where 97 purported bottles of Domaine Ponsot were to be sold for $440,500-$602,000. 
 
 He was told that the auction was offering bottles of Clos Saint-Denis from 1945 and 1949 and sent him the catalogue. 
 
 "It is an appellation we started in 1982," Ponsot told the jury. 
 
 He contacted Acker Merrall & Condit demanding the wines be withdrawn and flew to New York. 
 
 Ponsot said he arrived at the auction house 10 minutes into proceedings. 
 
 "The wines were there, in the room," he said. 
 
 Ponsot got them withdrawn from sale at the last minute. 
 
 Kurniawan, wearing an impeccable grey suit, sat expressionless in court, chewing on mints as Ponsot spoke. 
 
 Several of the bottles were produced in court and Ponsot pointed out the forgeries. 
 
 "This one is very obvious," Ponsot said. "Clos Saint-Denis, and it says 1945. This cannot exist. And a label from Nicolas? We never sold to Nicolas," he said, the bottle in his hand. 
 
 "And a Clos de la Roche 1929?" They only began bottling in the 1930s, Ponsot said as the jurors took notes. 
 
 Ponsot said he had lunch the next day with Kurniawan and asked him where he had got the Domaine Ponsot wine. 
 
 "I saw him watching his plate, saying, 'I don't know, I buy so many bottles'. I found it bizarre," he said. 
 
 Ponsot asked him again by email in May 2008. Kurniawan responded on June 5, giving him the name "Pak Hendra in Asia." 
 
 Ponsot said he found out that Pak is the equivalent of "Mister" and that Hendra is a very common name in Indonesia. 
 
 He saw Kurniawan again in May 2009 in Los Angeles, asking him for more details. 
 
 "He promised he would send me the details the next day, I am still waiting," Ponsot told the jury. 
 
 After allegedly trying to sell more dubious wine at auction in London via an intermediary in 2012, Kurniawan was arrested at his home in Arcadia in the suburbs of Los Angeles in March that year. 
 
 Laurent Roumier of the Domaine Roumier winery, also testified to forgeries including a Bonne Mares, another vintage Burgandy dated 1923 -- again before bottling began. 
 
 Aubert de Villaine, a co-manager of Romanee-Conti one of the most prestigious wineries in the world, was invited to look at various labels found at Kurniawan's home. 
 
 "It is extraordinary to see that number of lables for wines that have completely disappeared," he told the court. "I never had so many in my hand." 
 
 After Thursday's hearing he told AFP that he hoped for a guilty verdict. Roumier said something had to be done. 
 
 "This case isn't unique," he told AFP. 
 
 The defense has portrayed a young man who desperately wanted to fit into the richer, older world of rare wine collectors, and painted a picture of a man being made a scapegoat. 
 
 bd/jm/sg ||||| First federal prosecution for selling fake wine yields a conviction; Indonesian collector faces possible sentence of 40 years 
 
 Rudy Kurniawan did something unprecedented in the world of rare wines in 2006. An Acker, Merrall & Condit auction of his wines raised $24.7 million, the largest total ever for a single consignor. On Wednesday, Dec. 18, Kurniawan set another precedent. A federal jury pronounced him guilty of fraud for selling counterfeit wines and defrauding a finance company, making the 37-year-old Indonesian the first person tried and convicted for selling fake wines in the U.S. 
 
 Wearing an ill-fitting gray suit, Kurniawan stood tight-lipped, with his hands crossed in front of him, as a middle-aged woman, the forewoman for a 12-person jury, read the verdict. He gave no reaction. His lawyers did not look at him. The jury deliberated for about an hour and 45 minutes before returning at 10:55 a.m. with the decision. 
 
 Burgundy winemaker Laurent Ponsot, who has attended each day of the proceedings, told Wine Spectator after the verdict, "I feel no pity for him. It's good justice." 
 
 Kurniawan surfaced in rare wine circles a decade ago and quickly became a fixture at tastings and auctions, known for his passion for Burgundy and a talent for sniffing out fakes. Fellow collectors dubbed him “Dr. Conti” for his love of Domaine de la Romanée-Conti. Soon he was scouring cellars in America and Europe, looking for collectible wines, and selling hundreds of bottles at auctions and in private sales. 
 
 An Indonesian of Chinese ancestry, he had been living in Los Angeles for several years. (An immigration court ordered him to leave the country in 2003, but he appealed the case and it was pending.) Kurniawan was always vague about how he was spending millions of dollars on rare wines, as well as a Lamborghini and a wardrobe full of expensive watches. He said his family had done well in business in Asia. 
 
 But Kurniawan’s image as a savvy collector was tarnished when 22 lots of rare Burgundies supposedly from Domaine Ponsot were withdrawn from a 2008 Acker, Merrall & Condit auction at the request of proprietor Laurent Ponsot. As first reported by Wine Spectator, a collector with doubts on the wines’ authenticity had alerted Ponsot, who traveled to New York to make sure they were withdrawn. Asked where he had found the wines, Kurniawan was evasive. 
 
 More doubts surfaced soon as other collectors questioned wines Kurniawan had sold and it was revealed that he owed millions of dollars to Acker and some of its clients. Collector Bill Koch filed a lawsuit against Kurniawan in 2009. In February 2012, wines consigned by Antonio Castanos, a Los Angeles restaurateur and wine dealer, were withdrawn from a London auction by Spectrum after collectors raised doubts about them. Castanos testified in court this past week that he was a straw man for Kurniawan. A month after the Spectrum sale, FBI agents knocked on Kurniawan’s door, arrested him and conducted a protective sweep of his home. They found hundreds of bottles, labels, corks, stamps and notes that looked like the raw materials for making rare wines. 
 
 That physical evidence would form the foundation of the prosecution’s case, as Assistant U.S. Attorney Jason Hernandez and his team laid out boxes and boxes of the materials on a large table for the jury to see. An expert witness explained how labels had been copied and altered to create rare old bottles of Domaine de la Romanée-Conti and Château Latour. He added that he had examined at least 1,077 counterfeit wines over his career sourced from Kurniawan, including many at that 2006 sale and 267 bottles FBI agents seized from Kurniawan’s home. And three of Burgundy’s top vignerons took the stand to say that bottles Kurniawan sold bearing their winery’s labels were fakes. 
 
 The defense team, led by lawyer Jerome Mooney, tried to turn the suspicions toward the wine-collecting community, arguing that the market is full of counterfeits and that Kurniawan was being made a scapegoat. Mooney asked the winemakers whether the market was flooded with fake Burgundies. He tried to raise doubts about the credibility of the witnesses. In his closing arguments, Mooney claimed Kurniawan had merely been “reconditioning” and touching up the wines found in his home. And the labels, he argued, were for wallpaper in a home Kurniawan was building. 
 
 But the jury didn’t buy it. After the verdict was read, Judge Richard Berman set a sentencing date for April 24. Kurniawan faces a possible 40 years in prison, as well as fines. "He really just wanted to be accepted," Mooney said after the decision. "People were very supportive of him, but the moment he was arrested, everybody ran. My theory: He comes up with some wines that were truly rare. Suddenly people want to be with him. When he couldn't find more, he made it." ||||| A California man once known as a fine wine collector and dealer was convicted on two counts of fraud Wednesday in Manhattan federal court. 
 
 Rudy Kurniawan was charged with mail fraud for creating and then trying to sell wine that was counterfeit. He was also...
– Rudy Kurniawan wanted to be a big name in the world of wine, and on Wednesday he achieved that dream: He became the first person ever convicted in the US of concocting and selling counterfeit wine, reports Wine Spectator. The 37-year-old native of Indonesia duped scores of millionaires—including Bill Koch, brother of the political Koch brothers—and other wine aficionados over the years until his scheme unraveled. He now faces up to 40 years in prison on fraud convictions, including one for using his fake wine as collateral to get a $3 million loan, reports the Wall Street Journal. Kurniawan, who has lived in Los Angeles for several years, knew his stuff. He didn't pour two-buck-chuck into fancy bottles and try to pass it off. Instead, prosecutors say he blended young wines with older French vintages to produce wines sophisticated enough to pass for some of the rarest known to collectors, explains NPR. His big stumble came in 2008, when renowned French winemaker Laurent Ponsot spotted, up for auction, counterfeit bottles created by Kurniawan that had supposedly come from Ponsot's own vineyard. The bottles were from the years 1945 and 1949, except "it is an appellation we started in 1982," Ponsot explained to the jury, per the AFP. "I feel no pity for him," said Ponsot after the verdict in Manhattan. "It's good justice." (Click for the story of an elaborate wine heist that fell apart.)