Would You Know a Fake Wine If You Tasted It?

On a visit to the cellar of billionaire collector and anti-counterfeiting crusader Bill Koch, Lettie Teague had the rare opportunity to taste legendary wines alongside cunning (and very expensive) fakes

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The second in a two-part series on wine fraud.

“I’VE NEVER DONE this before. I don’t think anyone has done this before,” said Bill Koch as we sat down to taste 10 Burgundies and Bordeaux pulled from his cellar. Mr. Koch is certainly accustomed to tasting rare wines, but in this case, five bottles were authentic, five were counterfeit. He’d paid a total of $56,351.85 for them, though the collective amount would be much greater today. In the end, however, the fakes cost him even more dearly.

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