New Yorker on ultra-expensive wine counterfeits

from Boing Boing by Mark Frauenfelder

Mark Hurst's Good Experience newsletter alerted me to this New Yorker article about the crazy world of very expensive wine and how it is being counterfeited and sold to rich people who don't know the difference.

[Michael Broadbent, the head of Christie's wine department] is a Master of Wine, a professional certification for wine writers, dealers, and sommeliers, which connotes extensive experience with fine wine, and discriminating judgment. He pronounced a 1784 Th.J. Yquem "perfect in every sense: colour, bouquet, taste."

At two-thirty that December afternoon, Broadbent opened the bidding, at ten thousand pounds. Less than two minutes later, his gavel fell. The winning bidder was Christopher Forbes, the son of Malcolm Forbes and a vice-president of the magazine Forbes. The final price was a hundred and five thousand pounds -- about a hundred and fifty-seven thousand dollars. "It's more fun than the opera glasses Lincoln was holding when he was shot," Forbes declared, adding, "And we have those, too."

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