Wine Crimes, Part 1

THE SATURDAY SOMMELIER
Your weekly deep-dive into the world of wine & spirits
May 9, 2026  |  ISSUE No. 25

Wine Crimes, Part 1
Scandals, frauds, and audacious cons that shook the wine world

Wine has centuries of tradition, terroir, and craftsmanship behind it. Wine is also, it turns out, easy to cheat at, and the history of the industry is littered with people who found creative ways to do exactly that.

Some of these stories are genuinely alarming. Some are almost admirable in their audacity. All of them reveal something interesting about how the wine world works, about the cult of provenance, the trust placed in labels and experts, and the enormous sums of money that attach themselves to a bottle of fermented grape juice when the story is right.

This week: four stories. Next week: the one we saved for last, because it deserves its own issue.

THE STORIES: FOUR SCANDALS WORTH KNOWING

THE ANTIFREEZE SCANDAL

AUSTRIA, 1985

In the summer of 1985, a routine laboratory test at a Stuttgart supermarket found something unexpected in a bottle of Austrian Prädikat wine: diethylene glycol, a component of antifreeze. The additive made the wine taste richer and sweeter (convincingly similar to expensive late-harvest styles) and the scheme had been running since the late 1970s, quietly adopted by a network of producers who found it a cheap way to pass off cheap wine at premium prices. When the story broke it was front-page news across Europe. Twenty-seven million liters of Austrian wine had to be destroyed. Exports collapsed by over 90% within a year. The delicious irony: the fraud was only discovered because one of the producers tried to deduct the cost of the antifreeze on his tax return.

The fallout: It devastated the Austrian wine industry for nearly two decades. But the crisis also forced a complete overhaul of quality controls and labeling standards. The Austrian wine that emerged in the 1990s was genuinely excellent and arguably better than what had come before. The scandal may have been the best thing that ever happened to Austrian wine.

2022 Kolfok Querschnitt Grüner Veltliner $30
Kolfok is a prime example of that transformation of the Austrian wine industry. Stefan Wellanschitz took the family estate away from traditional methods into a lower-intervention style. The Querschnitt is a textbook modern Austrian Grüner: crisp, mineral, white pepper and citrus pith.

THE JEFFERSON BOTTLES

VARIOUS, 1985–2000s

In 1985, a German wine collector and dealer named Hardy Rodenstock announced he’d discovered something extraordinary in a Paris cellar: a cache of 18th-century wines, their bottles engraved with the initials “Th.J.” — Thomas Jefferson, who was known to have been passionate about wine during his time as American minister to France.

The bottles sold at Christie’s for record prices; a 1787 Château Lafite went for the equivalent of $156,000, a world record that still stands. Authentication was provided by Michael Broadbent, one of the most respected wine figures of his era.

The problem: when billionaire collector Bill Koch tried to put his Jefferson bottles on display at a museum, the Thomas Jefferson Foundation at Monticello stated clearly there was no evidence Jefferson had ever owned them. Koch hired a former FBI agent and a forensic geologist. The engraving, it turned out, had been made with a modern drill. Rodenstock, confronted repeatedly, claimed to have “forgotten” who sold him the wine. He was never charged with a crime.

The fallout: Rodenstock retreated from public life. Koch spent an estimated $25 million on his investigation and sued multiple parties. The case exposed the alarming ease with which rare wine provenance could be fabricated, and became the subject of a bestselling book, The Billionaire’s Vinegar.

2009 Château Lafite Rothschild Premier Grand Cru Classé $775
The 1787 Lafite at the center of the Jefferson scandal sold for $156,000. Ours is authenticated, legitimately sourced, and will cost you considerably less. The 2009 is widely considered one of the finest Lafites of the modern era: dense, structured, and still only just beginning to open. If you want to understand why someone would fake a bottle of this, open one. It becomes obvious immediately.

BRUNELLOPOLI

TUSCANY, ITALY, 2008

In March 2008, reports emerged that an investigation had begun into allegations against producers of Brunello di Montalcino, one of Italy’s most prestigious and expensive wines. By law, Brunello must be made from 100% Sangiovese grown in the Montalcino zone.

The allegation: that some producers had been quietly blending in other varieties (Merlot, southern Italian bulk wine) to make the wines cheaper to produce and darker in color for international markets. Twenty firms were suspected. Prominent estates confirmed they were under investigation. Hundreds of thousands of bottles were seized.

The name Brunellopoli — a reference to Tangentopoli, Italy’s 1990s bribery scandal — stuck immediately. Critics noted they’d been quietly observing stylistic anomalies in certain Brunellos for years.

The fallout: Most cases were eventually settled or dropped, with fines rather than criminal charges. The appellation voted to keep its 100% Sangiovese requirement. Several estates suffered permanent reputational damage, and the episode raised uncomfortable questions about how much critics and consumers can actually trust what’s on a label.

2006 Valdicava Madonna del Piano Riserva $360
If any producer was the antithesis of Brunellopoli, it's Valdicava. Vincenzo Abbruzzese has never wavered from 100% Sangiovese, no additives, no shortcuts, and the Madonna del Piano Riserva is the proof. The 2006 is one of the great modern Brunellos: iron, dried rose, tobacco, dark cherry, with tannins that are finally, nearly two decades on, beginning to relax. This is what Brunello is supposed to be.

THE SASSICAIA 2015 COUNTERFEITS

ITALY, 2020

Sassicaia is one of Italy’s greatest wines. It's the original Super Tuscan, made by the Incisa della Rocchetta family in Bolgheri. In 2020, reports emerged that significant quantities of counterfeit 2015 Sassicaia had appeared on the market, complete with convincing fake labels and bottles sourced from previous years.

The scale was substantial enough to shake the collectible Italian wine market. What made the story particularly interesting was the aftermath: academic research later found that the scandal actually caused the price of authenticated 2015 Sassicaia to increase, apparently because collectors became more eager to verify and acquire the real thing, driving up perceived scarcity and prestige.

The fallout: Several individuals were charged in Italy in connection with the counterfeiting operation. The episode reinforced that wine fraud is not limited to Burgundy and Bordeaux — any wine valuable enough to make counterfeiting profitable is a target.

2006 Antinori Guado al Tasso Bolgheri Superiore $250
We don't have any Sassicaia in stock, but Guado al Tasso, from the Antinori family's estate in Bolgheri, is its neighbor and in many vintages its equal. The 2006 is a Cabernet Sauvignon-dominant blend with Merlot and Syrah, aged 18 months in French oak. Nearly 20 years on it's hitting its stride: cedar, black fruit, leather, and a long mineral finish. The terroir that made Bolgheri famous is very much in the glass.

WHY IT KEEPS HAPPENING

These four stories share a common thread: wine fraud is so persistent not because the perpetrators are uniquely clever, but because the industry is structurally vulnerable.

Provenance is almost entirely trust-based. Labels are surprisingly easy to replicate. Experts are fallible and occasionally complicit. And the secondary market (auctions, private sales, gray-market dealers) creates exactly the conditions that fraud exploits: high prices, limited transparency, and a culture in which asking too many questions can feel impolite.

The market also incentivizes silence. If a collector discovers they’ve been defrauded, they face a choice: report it and watch their other bottles lose value, or stay quiet and hope nobody notices. Many choose the latter. The result is that a significant amount of fraud goes unreported, uncorrected, and, in some private cellars around the world, eventually drunk.

Next week: Part Two.

The story that makes all four of these look like warm-ups. One man, a kitchen laboratory in Arcadia, California, and an estimated $150 million in counterfeit wine, most of it fake Domaine de la Romanée-Conti. We find this one of the most interesting and scandalous stories in the world of wine. Stay tuned 🥂