This investigative report by Slate’s wine columnist, Mike Steinberger, examines the retailer allegedly at the center of a multimillion dollar fraud rippling throughout the rare wine world. Manhattan-based Royal Wine Merchants apparently provided its clientele with highly desirable wines that were later deemed fakes and traced back to Hardy Rodenstock, a supplier suspected of creating counterfeits such as “the so-called Thomas Jefferson bottles.” A lawsuit filed by one collector has since highlighted the connection between the two enterprises, revealing that “Rodenstock shipped 818 bottles of wine to Royal between 1998 and 2008.” According to Steinberger, “Many industry insiders… believe that the Rodenstock invoices prove that the rare wine business has indeed been polluted by fraud.” Steinberger meticulously details the voyage of one fake vintage in particular – a magnum of 1921 Château Pétrus – which changed hands several times and left a glut of litigation in its wake. Although a…
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Following a recent American Chemical Society (ACS) meeting at which scientists discussed how wines could be authenticated by measuring carbon isotopes, whose levels varied in the atmosphere during the years nuclear weapons were tested, a number of recent articles discuss the subject of food fraud. Said to affect some 5 to 7 percent of a range of foods from cheeses, fish, honey, and wine to expensive spices such as saffron, the problem has not apparently received the attention required from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), due to its focus on more pressing food safety concerns and contamination outbreaks. A consultant studying the matter for the Grocery Manufacturers Association was quoted as saying, “[Food fraud is] growing very rapidly, and there’s more of it than you might think.” Not only shoppers are fooled by mislabeled foods; major companies have been stung as well. Information about major food manufacturers and retailers…
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