Fine wines are made for investment. Some of them won’t ever even be consumed. They’ll just continue to be passed from generation to generation, steadily accumulating value. Fine wines are, in short, wines designed to make people money. Enter: Rudy Kurniawan.
Indonesian-born Kurniawan arrived in the United States in the 1990s on a student visa. He would eventually seek political asylum in 2001, with all efforts exhausted until 2003 at which point he was court-mandated to self-deport. But he elected to stay in the U.S. illegally. Why? Because he was very, very involved in the high-end, rare wine auction market, peddling wine to some of the richest people in the country. At one point, he was spending upwards of $1 million every month to secure prestige bottles for auction. He even received the nickname Dr. Conti for his proclivity for Domaine de la Romaneé-Conti.
The only problem? The wines he offloaded to auction houses like Sotheby’s and Christie’s were fake. Rudy wasn’t the fine wine aficionado he promised to be — he was a fraudster and a con man. He was indicted, imprisoned for 10 years, and immediately deported to Indonesia upon his release in 2020.
Rudy’s story is more than entertaining; it’s a glimpse behind the curtain into the world of fine wine, and the extremely high stakes involved in prestige wine trading. Today on “Wine 101,” Keith kicks off his fine wine series with a short story on Rudy Kurniawan. Tune in for more.
Listen Online
Follow Keith on Instagram @VinePairKeith. Rate and review this podcast wherever you get your podcasts. It really helps get the word out there.
“Wine 101” was produced, recorded, and edited by yours truly, Keith Beavers, at the VinePair headquarters in New York City. I want to give a big old shout-out to co-founders Adam Teeter and Josh Malin for creating VinePair. Big shout-out to Danielle Grinberg, the art director of VinePair, for creating the most awesome logo for this podcast. Also, Darby Cicci for the theme song. And I want to thank the entire VinePair staff for helping me learn something new every day. See you next week.
*Image retrieved from salahoff via stock.adobe.com
The article Wine 101: Fine Wine Part I: Rudy appeared first on VinePair.
Chinese (Simplified)
Dutch
English
French
German
Italian
Portuguese
Russian
Spanish