Faking Old Wine & Billionaire'sVinegar

Finished up this book ystrday. Pretty interesting read, but not nearly as riveting as Tabor's on Cork or The Botanist & Vineyard on phylloxera. Since the isue is still in the courts, the finish seemed a little abrupt and it didn't tie the case up into a neat little bundle I'd have liked it to. On the nuclear issues, it was clear the author was well out of his element.
The big question in my mind...and not at all even addressed by the book....is how the heck do you go about faking very old wine...assuming that you believe to authors implications that that's what Rosenstock did w/ the ThJ btls and others he auctioned off?? Wines that are dozens-100-200 yrs old are in a highly reduced state. They fall apart pretty rapidly once they're opened and exposed to air. That, presumably, is what some of those btls would have had to have done to fool those experts. If you're blending older/cheaper stocks of wines to simulate those very old wines, you're going to have to be using a glove box w/ an inert atmosphere to keep the wine reductive as you blend. I just can't imagine that Rodenstock had the technical/enologic skills to fabricate wines that had this old character that would fool these experts that tried the wines and vouched for their character. Unless, of course...gasp...these experts/emperors wear no clothes...or maybe only Fruit-Of-The-Looms.
Anybody have any idea how you would go about faking a very old wine??
Tom

I thought these old bottle were bought and sold by collectors to either show off or speculate in, not to be drunk. Once opened its just an old bottle, unopened it is something to wonder at with a value.

So the state of the wine inside is immaterial.

Tom,
I have no knowledge of what Rodenstock did, other than the New Yorker article (I reserved the Billionaire's Vinegar at library, haven't gotten yet). But if seems to me a clever forger (and no one seems to deny Rodenstock is clever) wouldn't try to "manufacture" from new wine. If I were trying to forge a counterfeit of a Petrus, Cheval Blanc or a Lafite from one of the better vintages of the 20s or 30s, I'd probably attempt to buy cases of some decent but inexpensive wines from 55, 62, 64, 66, 71, 78, 83, 88. Things like du Tertre, Cantemerle, Lanessan, Clos Rene, Troplong Mondot, Corbin, etc. Re-bottle under gas. Maybe even mix (I think in New Yorker article lab decided that the wine they analysed was a mixture, at least some post-atomic era). maybe with something young. Maybe serve what I thought was best (or even the real thing) to the critics. If one found a pristine bottle of 1928 Lafite, it would be quite profitable to serve that to critics, and then make the rest of your "case" of '28 out of a case of '55 Pontet Canet.

Maybe serve what I thought was best (or even the real thing) to the critics. If one found a pristine bottle of 1928 Lafite, it would be quite profitable to serve that to critics, and then make the rest of your "case" of '28 out of a case of '55 Pontet Canet.

Yes. I imagine part of Rodenstock's secret was to start out with some authentic wines with which to prime the critics, before flogging the fakes to the unsuspecting but wealthy masses. I don't think all the old wines were brilliant - remembering a few throwaway lines from Robinson's biography, for instance - but obviously the plan was to establish some sort of reliability for the old wines without appearing too dodgy...
cheers,
Graeme

I also just finished the book. I share the comments about how the end of the book seems a bit unfinished. Still I thought it was a fun and interesting read. The author seems a lot more interested in the psychology of the people than in the wine technical issues. Exactly who can say what 1797 Laffite is really supposed to taste like? I think the author's point is that it's really not about the wine when you get to this level of collecting... it's about having something that nobody else has. It's about ego gratification at the most extreme level. It's about how we deceive ourselves.

Glenn