Pieter Colpaert
Appearances
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1076: Wine Fraud | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, I mean, but then these experts sometimes don't even agree with themselves. Because there's another study I like to cite, which is the same researcher. He found that only 10% of judges at the California State Fair wine competition, only 10% of judges were able to replicate their scores within the same medal group when they were tasting the same wine several times.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1076: Wine Fraud | Skeptical Sunday
So, you know, there's all kinds of things that influence or bias their judgment, like the order in which they tasted the wines, the scores they gave to previous wines, even the reputation of the producer or the region. So, you know, one moment they'll give it a gold medal, the next they'll give it a silver medal. And this is the same taster.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1076: Wine Fraud | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, sorry. I think I have to burst that bubble because, I mean, humans are highly suggestible. You know, our expectations do influence how we experience things.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1076: Wine Fraud | Skeptical Sunday
And then wine is no exception because a group of German researchers, they found that people's brain activity while they were drinking wine was influenced by the price they were told that wine costs, even when that information was completely fake.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1076: Wine Fraud | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah. I mean, it wasn't a classic wine tasting. These subjects, let's call them, they were laying down in the scanner, the MRI scanner, and they had test tubes feeding them a milliliter of wine every time.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1076: Wine Fraud | Skeptical Sunday
No, there's not. But they gave all these participants the same wines to drink and then told them different prices. And when people believed that they were drinking a more expensive wine, you saw the areas of their brain associated with reward and pleasure become more active.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1076: Wine Fraud | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, I don't know if they're pretending. I think it's a thing your brain does, you know, and it's a known dynamic because it's not limited to wine. You know, there's a name for this phenomenon. Psychologists have called it the price quality heuristic. which means that we kind of subconsciously associate higher prices with higher quality.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1076: Wine Fraud | Skeptical Sunday
So that will then kind of affect your actual perception of the product.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1076: Wine Fraud | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, or maybe you should just start charging, see what happens.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1076: Wine Fraud | Skeptical Sunday
But you know, I also want to note that the people in this very experiment, they were just kind of like regular, occasional wine drinkers like you and I. They weren't sommeliers or wine experts. So actually, one of the things these researchers didn't test but were interested in is whether you can train your taste buds to reduce those placebo marketing effects. Yeah.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1076: Wine Fraud | Skeptical Sunday
Because if you're a master sommelier, you've undergone super rigorous training and that is supposed to help you identify all these different kind of technical elements in a wine so you can assess its quality.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1076: Wine Fraud | Skeptical Sunday
Yep. But I mean, I don't know if it'll surprise you, but in these blind tastings, you know, experts, they're often able to pick out grapes and vintages and regions, but generally they're not going to be able to tell you if they're drinking an expensive wine or not.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1076: Wine Fraud | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, I mean, they tested that as well because there's this famous study known as the Wine Spectator award-winning wine tasting. And they had researchers had 54 wine experts taste a selection of wines. These ranged from like $1.65 to $150 a bottle, but they didn't tell them anything about the identity of the wine.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1076: Wine Fraud | Skeptical Sunday
So it was a blind tasting and the experts were unable to consistently identify which wines were expensive or even like rate the expensive wines as tasting better than the cheap wines.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1076: Wine Fraud | Skeptical Sunday
No, no. I mean, I don't want to put Somalias out of work here. I think they, you know, wine experts, Somalias, they have real important expertise. They will have a wide knowledge of wine regions, of grape varieties, of winemaking techniques. You know, they'll be like super knowledgeable about how you serve, store, decant wine. They'll tell you all about how you can pair it with food.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1076: Wine Fraud | Skeptical Sunday
You know, a lot of these people train for this for years. Especially there's this thing called the Masters of Wine.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1076: Wine Fraud | Skeptical Sunday
Oh, yeah. I mean, those guys, they're part of a very super elite club. As of last year, there are only 416 masters of wine in the entire world from 31 different countries. So these guys, they have to, guys and girls, sorry, they have to pass a very rigorous exam. And it can take years before you pass the exam. They usually pass less than 10% of people who even participate.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1076: Wine Fraud | Skeptical Sunday
That's an exam that'll test their knowledge of, you know, everything from like grape growing, winemaking to the business and marketing of wine. And the exam also includes a blind tasting of 36 wines over three days.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1076: Wine Fraud | Skeptical Sunday
I mean, to be fair, again, they'll be able to tell you all kinds of things about this wine. They'll be able to make a really good assessment of the quality of the wine, you know, like the balance, the complexity, the potential for aging.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1076: Wine Fraud | Skeptical Sunday
So in theory, you know, these masters of wine, they'll be able to say like, Jordan, this is a well-made high quality wine that just doesn't necessarily mean that it's an expensive wine. And I think this goes to show there's no straightforward connection between perceived quality and price. And listen, I think that's good news for people like me who love wine.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1076: Wine Fraud | Skeptical Sunday
Right. But that's also why it's worth it for these wineries to invest in creating this image, this like aura of luxury and exclusivity around their wines, because that's what's going to make people think that their wines are worth spending money on.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1076: Wine Fraud | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah. And then, you know, to your point, there are lots of small and subtle ways that they can achieve that. Because ages ago, I was just getting into wine and I had a friend who pretended to be a real wine expert.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1076: Wine Fraud | Skeptical Sunday
And he told me that if the bottom of a wine bottle had what they call a punt, which is, you know, where the bottom is not entirely flat, but slightly indented, and you can kind of like put your thumb in there. That meant it was a great quality wine.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1076: Wine Fraud | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, well, most bottles. Most bottles are not entirely flat and they'll have like an indentation. But I think basically what my buddy was saying is that the deeper the punt, the more expensive the wine should be. And, you know, I heard that from several people. But then later on, I found out that's really just an urban legend.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1076: Wine Fraud | Skeptical Sunday
Thanks for having me, Jordan. But don't call me a wine expert. I think I'm just a regular guy who loves a good glass of wine now and then and who started wondering why a lot of the good stuff is so damn expensive.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1076: Wine Fraud | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, fair enough. And I mean, there's some historical truth to why glass blowers used to make bottles that way. It made it easier for the bottles to stand up on the shelf. It helped collect the sediment as the wine ages. And so it is true that it's like slightly more expensive to make bottles with a punt. But still, there's no correlation with the quality of wine inside the bottle.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1076: Wine Fraud | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, I mean, and you know, I'm bringing this up because I think it shows how there's all kinds of external factors that influence how we gauge the quality of a bottle of wine. And that's something the wine industry obviously knows and plays into with like pretty creative marketing strategies, like how they designed a wine label,
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1076: Wine Fraud | Skeptical Sunday
the shape of the bottle, and even the weight of the bottle, those have all been proven to influence people's perception of a wine's quality and their willingness to pay a higher price for it.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1076: Wine Fraud | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah. I mean, another study, because they do a lot of studies on this kind of thing, found that people associate heavier, thicker glass bottles with higher quality wines. So in this study, they present the exact same wine, same label, bottles of different weights, and they found consumers are willing to pay more for the wine in the heavier bottle.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1076: Wine Fraud | Skeptical Sunday
So I mean, go to any winery and look at their more premium wines. Usually they'll use heavier, more substantial bottles for them.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1076: Wine Fraud | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, brilliant. Brilliant idea, Jordan. I think health authorities might have a slightly different opinion on that one. The shape of the bottle, that's another signifier. Like think of a classic burgundy bottle has those nice sloping shoulders or a Riesling bottle is tall and slender. Those designs kind of give them this air of tradition and of quality.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1076: Wine Fraud | Skeptical Sunday
And it'll also help you notice them quicker when you go to the wine shop.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1076: Wine Fraud | Skeptical Sunday
No, I mean, Jordan, are you going to believe me if I tell you there's a study for this?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1076: Wine Fraud | Skeptical Sunday
I know, there's a lot of money in wine. So in this study, they found simple black and gold labels. People perceive them as more luxurious. And then if it has a bright color, a quirky label like kangaroos and rainbows you were talking about, those are perceived as casual and affordable.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1076: Wine Fraud | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, yeah. I mean, in the world of fine and rare wines, wine fraud is much more common than people realize. I think I read somewhere that experts estimate that as much as 20% of the fine wine market could be counterfeit, especially when it comes to like the rare expensive bottles.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1076: Wine Fraud | Skeptical Sunday
Right. And not in like the regular wine market, but in the rare wine market, that's what they think, like one in five. Right. Not at BevMo.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1076: Wine Fraud | Skeptical Sunday
No, there's, you know, your $10 bottle of wine, they probably won't bother faking.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1076: Wine Fraud | Skeptical Sunday
And in this case, there's this documentary that you might have heard of called Sour Grapes.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1076: Wine Fraud | Skeptical Sunday
It's about one of the most notorious cases of wine fraud. It involves Rudy Kurniawan. He's this Indonesian wine collector who was convicted of selling millions and millions of dollars worth of counterfeit wines. So this guy, for years, he would mix cheaper wines together and then just pass them off as rare, expensive vintages.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1076: Wine Fraud | Skeptical Sunday
And in doing so, he was able to fool like super experienced collectors, like billionaires, like William Koch. So they found that this guy sold as much as $550 million worth of fake wine. That's by far the largest wine fraud case in history.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1076: Wine Fraud | Skeptical Sunday
You know, I think he was a master at exploiting the trust and lack of transparency in the high-end wine market. This is someone who had an encyclopedic knowledge of rare wines. So he was able to create elaborate fakes, you know, very convincing fabricated labels and bottles.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1076: Wine Fraud | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, I mean, it's a real thriller, this story. There's all these experts in the wine world that started to become a little suspicious of him, including this woman, Maureen Downey. She's like an eagle-eyed wine expert, and she started to notice minor inconsistencies in the bottle that he was selling. But still, it was hard to find like actual evidence of fraud. But then he got a little sloppy.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1076: Wine Fraud | Skeptical Sunday
He sold several bottles of a rare Burgundy. This is a 1945 Domaine Ponceau Clos Saint-Denis at an auction in New York.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1076: Wine Fraud | Skeptical Sunday
Well, I think my origin story is I was drinking this beautiful Sicilian red wine from a natural winemaker in Sicily, who's actually a Belgian guy, just like myself. His name is Frank Cornelissen, and he produces some really incredible wines on the slopes of Mount Etna in Sicily. So I was trying his Susu Caru, which is a favorite of rapper Action Bronson.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1076: Wine Fraud | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, I mean, just after World War II. And can you believe his luck? This auction was attended by Laurent Ponceau. This is the head of that winery. And this winery, it had been in his family for generations. So he knew all about those wines. And he knew that his family had not produced wine from that particular vineyard until 1982. So this guy was trying to pass off a bottle from 1945.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1076: Wine Fraud | Skeptical Sunday
So that raised some obvious concerns. And then the FBI starts investigating. Long story short, Rudy Korniawan was sentenced to 10 years in prison in order to pay $28.4 million in restitution to his victims.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1076: Wine Fraud | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah. I mean, in this case, this famous Kurniawan case also increased demand for wine authentication services. So Maureen Downey, who I mentioned earlier, she was one of the first to raise suspicions of Kurniawan. She helped out the FBI. She testified against him. And now she's become this kind of like Columbo or Sherlock Holmes of the wine world.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1076: Wine Fraud | Skeptical Sunday
So she's made it her mission to uncover wine fraud and help collectors spotting fake bottles.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1076: Wine Fraud | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, I mean, the wine focus, Nancy Drew, she has her own consulting company and several others like hers exist now too. They all kind of use a combination of scientific analysis and their expert knowledge to look at the authenticity of a bottle. So they go and like analyze the chemical composition of a wine. They research its provenance. They examine the bottle and label for inconsistencies.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1076: Wine Fraud | Skeptical Sunday
They go and do some like archival research, like all these things to spot the fake bottles of wine.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1076: Wine Fraud | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, I mean, it's in the name, right? It's the rare wine market. So that's the determining factor. It's all about scarcity. It's all about provenance. It's also about historical significance. Those things can really drive prices to astronomical heights, where a single bottle can sell for hundreds of thousands of dollars.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1076: Wine Fraud | Skeptical Sunday
No, no, it's been growing, like especially since the pandemic, because that was a boom time for all kinds of collectibles.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1076: Wine Fraud | Skeptical Sunday
You know, expensive watches, luxury handbags, and Pokemon cards, like all those just boomed in price. So in 2021, global wine auction sales hit their record high. $520 million worth of rare wines were sold that year. Wow. You know, there's also been a correction in the wine markets. The Livex Fine Wine 1000 Index, they track 1,000 leading wines. It fell 14% in 2023.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1076: Wine Fraud | Skeptical Sunday
And then you have the champagne 50 index. This doubled during the pandemic between like 2020 and the end of 2022. But then last year, you know, another correction, it fell by 18%.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1076: Wine Fraud | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, exactly. He compared the joy he felt drinking that wine to when his mom bought him the NBA Jam Tournament Edition for PlayStation when he was a little kid.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1076: Wine Fraud | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, I think the main example or the most famous one is a bottle of 1945 Romanée Conti, which sold for $558,000 at a Sotheby's auction in 2018, so six years ago. It still has the record for most expensive regular 750 milliliter bottle of wine ever sold. Wow. And that particular wine, that particular vintage is considered one of the greatest Burgundies ever made.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1076: Wine Fraud | Skeptical Sunday
And there's only a couple of bottles left.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1076: Wine Fraud | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, I mean, I'm pretty bad at math, but I think it's like a small SUV with each gulp. Oh my gosh. I mean, there's some other, you know, ridiculous examples. Like there's a champagne bottle that they sold as an NFT in collaboration with Bored Ape.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1076: Wine Fraud | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah. And Bored Ape is, you know, they're cartoon monkeys, basically. So this was a cartoon monkey champagne bottle, which sold for $2.5 million in 2022.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1076: Wine Fraud | Skeptical Sunday
The bottle was real. Oh, the bottle was real? The bottle was real, but the cartoon monkey is fake. Okay.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1076: Wine Fraud | Skeptical Sunday
Nope. I don't think any bottle of wine is worth 2.5 million. And there's another one called the Taste of Diamonds Champagne. That's a bottle they engraved with gold, and then they built an 18-carat diamond into the label. Oh, my God. That one, a little over 10 years ago, they sold for $1.9 million. Wow. That's dumb.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1076: Wine Fraud | Skeptical Sunday
I mean, I think they're all kind of dumb, ridiculous examples. Although my favorite of these crazy expensive wines, I think, is the wine that went to space.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1076: Wine Fraud | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, it's something like that. I mean, they basically sent 12 bottles of Petrus 2000. That's considered one of the best wines in the world. They sent them to the International Space Station where they orbited for more than 14 months, just going around the Earth.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1076: Wine Fraud | Skeptical Sunday
Great question. I mean, it was part of a privately funded research study on food and agriculture in space. So they were trying to examine the effect of zero gravity and space conditions on the aging process of wine. Okay, whatever. Yeah, I mean, when the bottles returned to Earth in January of 2021, they had some scientists analyze them.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1076: Wine Fraud | Skeptical Sunday
And then they also had like a group of super lucky wine tasters. They got to compare the space-aged wine with the Earth-aged bottles.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1076: Wine Fraud | Skeptical Sunday
No, I mean, it did taste more smoky. I bet it did. more floral. And that's according to journalist and wine writer, Jane Anson. She was one of the tasters. She said, you know, it's noticeably different, but she also said those are the aromatics, you know, the smoky floral ones that would develop when you age Petrus anyway, you know, whether you age it in space or, you know, in your cellar. Right.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1076: Wine Fraud | Skeptical Sunday
In your cellar, your basement. Yeah. Yeah. She couldn't even say if it was better or worse. Yeah.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1076: Wine Fraud | Skeptical Sunday
So in May of 2021, Christie's, they sold a bottle of the space wine along with like a regular bottle of the Petrus so that the buyer could compare the two. This was a private sale, so they didn't disclose the final price, but they set the estimated price at $1 million.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1076: Wine Fraud | Skeptical Sunday
According to WineSearcher.com, the average price of a 2000 Petrus will be like around $7,000 for one bottle. So 7,000 versus, you know, 1 million.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1076: Wine Fraud | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, $993,000 for a space wine and like $7,000 of regular Petrus.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1076: Wine Fraud | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah. I mean, I think you got to ask these collectors because I think there's a few of them who they'll probably enjoy the flex, you know, opening up this super rare bottle of wine for like a special occasion. Maybe they want to impress a date.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1076: Wine Fraud | Skeptical Sunday
But, you know, I think mostly it's probably more an investment or like a status symbol because generally, you know, the value of those wines, it's way more tied to the rarity and the history of them than their actual taste. That makes sense.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1076: Wine Fraud | Skeptical Sunday
Well, yeah, I think everybody loves a good story. They love a celebrity connection, right? So the historical significance of a particular bottle plays a big role. Several of the most expensive wines that have ever been sold have a connection to Thomas Jefferson, the founding father. He was one of history's most famous wine collectors. This guy, he was ambassador to France.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1076: Wine Fraud | Skeptical Sunday
And he spent a lot of his time visiting the vineyards of Bordeaux, of Burgundy, buying up wine for his collection.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1076: Wine Fraud | Skeptical Sunday
I think he kind of finagled a dream job for himself. But then in 1985, supposedly, someone discovers this like bricked up cellar wall in Paris and they find a wine cellar that's more than 150 years old. Several bottles in there have Thomas Jefferson's initials, TH and J. So those bottles, they end up in the hands of this famous German guy, wine collector, music producer, Hardy Rodenstock.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1076: Wine Fraud | Skeptical Sunday
Well, first of all, the wine itself. I mean, it's just, it's amazing. Like it's somewhere I'd say between like a light red wine and a rosé. It has a beautiful ruby color, like a nose full of red fruits and herbs. It's not too jammy, just like a very unique, vibrant wine. The kind of wine that I want to be drinking all summer. And also, it's a natural wine.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1076: Wine Fraud | Skeptical Sunday
He works together with Christie's, the auction house. They authenticate the bottles, they auction off several of them, and then in 1989, a bottle of 1869 Chateau Lafite, supposedly owned by Thomas Jefferson, sold for more than $150,000. So this is 35 years ago at the time, the most expensive wine ever sold. Now, guess what?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1076: Wine Fraud | Skeptical Sunday
Yep. I mean, listen, there had always been suspicions around the authenticity of these wines. So in 2005, billionaire wine collector Bill Koch, he had some of his so-called Jefferson bottles tested by a team of experts. And these experts, they found that the bottles contained wine from the 1960s, not from the 18th century.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1076: Wine Fraud | Skeptical Sunday
So Jefferson, he kept really good records of his wine purchases, but very few of his bottles are still around. And even fewer can be proven to have belonged to him. Though one of those fake bottles actually ended up being one of the most expensive bottles never sold. What do you mean never sold? Okay, this is another one of my favorite stories.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1076: Wine Fraud | Skeptical Sunday
William Socolan, he's this famous New York wine merchant. He had a bottle of Chateau Margaux from 1787. It had Jefferson's initials. Slash 1965, but okay, yep. And he had this bottle on consignment from its English owner. So he was going around New York trying to sell it for half a million dollars. People were kind of laughing at him.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1076: Wine Fraud | Skeptical Sunday
No one thought that he would actually be able to sell a bottle of wine for half a million dollars. But as part of his whole PR blitz, he went to this very fancy Chateau Margaux dinner at this very fancy Four Seasons restaurant in New York. And then at the end of that night, I don't know how many glasses of wine deep, he walks into a metal tray table carrying that wine and he breaks the bottle.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1076: Wine Fraud | Skeptical Sunday
Well, I mean, he actually didn't because it was literally in his obituary that was published in the New York Times.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1076: Wine Fraud | Skeptical Sunday
Funny thing about that story, some of the attendees, they immediately started dipping their fingers into whatever drops that they could salvage so that they could at least get a taste of this wine. The wine had chemically deteriorated and the restaurant manager said it was completely undrinkable.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1076: Wine Fraud | Skeptical Sunday
Well... So Colin, he did have the foresight to insure the wine. So he received a $225,000 insurance payout, which he says he shared with the owner. And to this day, I think it still holds the record for the world's most expensive broken bottle of wine.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1076: Wine Fraud | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah. I mean, in fact, I do, because I think, you know, we've been talking about wine age and space. What about wine aged on the bottom of the ocean? There's an interesting little subset in the world of fine wines that they call shipwreck wines.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1076: Wine Fraud | Skeptical Sunday
There's unnatural wines, apparently? Well, I mean, natural is kind of a catch-all term. In this case, it means the winemaker tries to intervene in the fermentation process as little as possible. So they're only using indigenous yeasts. They're not adding any chemical or commercial yeasts. They're not adding additives or sulfites to the wines, as more traditional winemakers would typically do.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1076: Wine Fraud | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, in 2010, for example, 47 bottles of Veuve Clicquot champagne were recovered from a 19th century shipwreck in the Baltic Sea. And, you know, wildly enough, these were still drinkable. They'd spent 170 years underwater. Wow. Yeah, so some people got to taste them and they said they were sweet, but balanced by a dry acidity.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1076: Wine Fraud | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, I mean, I think a lot of people agreed because those bottles sold for around like $43,000 a bottle at auction. Wow. And this gave Viv Clicquot, the Champagne House, they gave it an idea. Yeah. Oh, no.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1076: Wine Fraud | Skeptical Sunday
A little less drastic, but they just started experimenting with storing bottles deep in the ocean. They've submerged 350 bottles of their champagne in that same area of the Baltic Sea where the shipwreck had been found. They say this is some kind of experiment. They want to better understand the behavior of wine under extreme aging conditions.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1076: Wine Fraud | Skeptical Sunday
And that's an experiment they're going to be running for about 40 years. Every couple of years they go, they surface a few of those bottles and then they taste and they compare them with bottles that have just been aged in like a regular cellar.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1076: Wine Fraud | Skeptical Sunday
I mean, listen, up to you. Joe Bastianich, maybe you know him. He was on MasterChef. He's a famous restaurant owner. He's a winemaker. He wrote this memoir called Restaurant Man in 2012. And there he writes, no wine should cost more than a hundred bucks. And I think it's a little ironic because he has this restaurant. I live here in New York. He has a restaurant called Babbo.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1076: Wine Fraud | Skeptical Sunday
Very fancy, Michelin-starred Italian restaurant. A lot of bottles on his list are selling for more than $1,000. So this is the guy telling you no wine should cost more than $100. But I think... You know, he makes a good point in the book because in the end, we're talking about fermented grape juice. Take into account the farming and the labor and the storage, what have you.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1076: Wine Fraud | Skeptical Sunday
There's a real limit to what it costs to actually produce 750 milliliters of fermented grape juice. So that's exactly where capitalism, market forces, and then especially marketing come into play.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1076: Wine Fraud | Skeptical Sunday
There's obviously, you'll find some like exceptional expensive wines, but I just don't think that a higher price guarantees you a better taste or a better experience. I mean, listen, any wine expert is going to tell you there's lots of high quality wines that are available at affordable price points.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1076: Wine Fraud | Skeptical Sunday
I'd say maybe $20 to $30 a bottle is like the sweet spot, but then past a certain price point, whether that's $50, $100, you're really no longer paying for quality. You're paying for name, for reputation, for scarcity.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1076: Wine Fraud | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, I mean, absolutely. I guess at the end of the day, wine is there to be enjoyed regardless of a price tag. So my amateur opinion, amateur advice is go and experiment with some different regions, grape varieties, different styles, and then discover what you like. And just don't get too fixated on the price. Just trust yourself, trust your taste buds.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1076: Wine Fraud | Skeptical Sunday
Right? I mean, listen, start saving up and then invite me over for dinner when you track one down. You got it, man. Cheers. It's totally my pleasure, Jordan.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1076: Wine Fraud | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah. I mean, I hope I'm not that cliche guy, but a lot of natural wine is a little too funky or like weird for my taste because I don't want my wine to smell like a horse stable or I don't want my wine to taste like kombucha.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1076: Wine Fraud | Skeptical Sunday
Well, this wine that I was talking about, it had none of that kombucha flavor. This winemaker, his goal was to let the grapes and the character of the Etna volcanic territory shine through in his wines. And you know, the best part of it is it sells for maybe like $30 a bottle in the US, which, you know, it's quite expensive. It's no like barefoot or two buck chuck.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1076: Wine Fraud | Skeptical Sunday
But for a wine of that quality, I think it's a steal. Because also, you know, there are risks to the natural winemaking process.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1076: Wine Fraud | Skeptical Sunday
So, you know, winemakers typically will be using commercial yeast and additives to prevent spoilage and to have a more stable and consistent product. So, you know, not a commercial, but this guy Cornelison, he has to be super diligent in his winemaking process, in the grapes he selects, how he stores the wines, etc.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1076: Wine Fraud | Skeptical Sunday
So there's some irony there, you know, it's not intervening in your wine is more expensive and more difficult sometimes than tinkering with it.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1076: Wine Fraud | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, I mean, those are great comparisons. It's exactly the same where, you know, like with these commercial wines, you're adding a bunch of stuff. So you have a more consistent product. So it all kind of tastes the same. But that is because you're adding all these flavors to it by adding commercial yeasts.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1076: Wine Fraud | Skeptical Sunday
And also, you know, it's the same with like, it's the reason why organic food is more expensive than non-organic food.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1076: Wine Fraud | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, I mean, there's some truth to that because to kind of continue my love story with the Susukaru, this wine, after I drank it, I started talking about it with my local wine guy. Of course, you've got a wine guy in every area code. I mean, you don't. They're really useful. I mean, so anyway, we were chatting about Frank Cornelison's wines.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1076: Wine Fraud | Skeptical Sunday
And this wine guy mentioned to me that Frank produces what some people consider the holy grail of natural Italian wines. It's called the Magma. You know, the grapes are being grown on the side of a volcano. Clever. Yeah. And it's made from a single vineyard of 100-year-old Nerello Mascalese vines. So there's only a couple hundred bottles produced each year.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1076: Wine Fraud | Skeptical Sunday
And the most recent vintage retails for, I think, around $350 a bottle in the U.S.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1076: Wine Fraud | Skeptical Sunday
You know, it's the same as any luxury product, really. There's the rarity factor. Because with such limited production, the magma is just simply much harder to come by. And then there's also the age of the vines, because the magma comes from a single vineyard of pre-Phylloxera vines. Pre-Phylloxera? Sorry, sorry. So this is pretty technical. Time for some wine history. All right.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1076: Wine Fraud | Skeptical Sunday
The Phylloxera was an insect pest. in the late 19th century, and it caused this huge epidemic, which destroyed most of the vineyards for wine grapes in Europe, especially in France and Italy. So winemakers started ripping out most of the infected vines, and then one of their main solutions was to plant imported bug-resistant rootstocks and graft new vines onto them.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1076: Wine Fraud | Skeptical Sunday
But so around the slopes of Mount Etna, the little bug, the piloxera, didn't make it past a certain altitude. So there, they still have a fair amount of ungrafted vines from the original rootstock that are more than 100 years old. So those are vines that are super rare and distinct. And then also, you know, these old vines, they produce grapes with more concentrated flavors, more complexity.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1076: Wine Fraud | Skeptical Sunday
Listen, I will gladly admit to waxing poetically about this wine. So let me wax on for just a little bit longer. Another important factor is the aging process. because the Susukaru is a wine that you're supposed to enjoy when it's young. And then the Magma is aged for one and a half years in special epoxy tanks, and then another one and a half years in the bottle.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1076: Wine Fraud | Skeptical Sunday
So that allows it to develop even more depth and nuance. So that also means more flexing to whatever company you happen to be in at that particular moment in time.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1076: Wine Fraud | Skeptical Sunday
Listen, that's what I tell myself. But I think that's a way to cope with the fact that I cannot afford a bottle of magma.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1076: Wine Fraud | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, I mean, you're right there because, you know, this is a dynamic, again, you see it with all kinds of luxury products. Magma has this like near legendary status in the wine world. It's got glowing reviews, high ratings from collectors, and all those things contribute to price. There's also one wildcard, which is the winemaker. He says he uses this social pricing structure.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1076: Wine Fraud | Skeptical Sunday
So he actually makes the magma more expensive to subsidize his other wines, like the Susukaru, so he can sell those at a more democratic price point. And so more people are able to try his wines. So that actually, that's smart.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1076: Wine Fraud | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah. And as you say, it's about the scarcity. So the harder it is to find a wine, the more expensive it's going to be. And it's probably the same with a handbag. If it's harder to find a handbag, it'll be more expensive. Whether that's a single vineyard wine or it's from a specific rare vintage or this really prestigious vineyard, those are all factors.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1076: Wine Fraud | Skeptical Sunday
And then reputation is another big one as well, because you have wines from very famous wine regions like Burgundy or Napa Valley. Those will fetch higher prices just based on the wine region they're from.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1076: Wine Fraud | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, and then selling a bottle right away that is cheaper for the producer than having to age and store it. So again, like with anything, production costs are a big factor. Cost of land, labor, storage, materials, and so on. And you know, like most of the wines we drink will be machine harvested, but then the premium wines, for those, most winemakers will still be handpicking their grapes.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1076: Wine Fraud | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, I think they're faster. But handpicking is still easier on the grapes and vines. Because, you know, when you're a human, you tend to be a little bit more judicious and careful about how you pick the grapes, what grapes you pick. So I think right now there's not really a substitute for the trained human eye.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1076: Wine Fraud | Skeptical Sunday
Although, I mean, listen, I'm sure in a couple of years we'll have these like AI powered grape picking machines.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1076: Wine Fraud | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, I mean, do expensive wines taste better? That's the million-dollar question that we're trying to answer here. And I'm sorry to say I don't have a straightforward answer for you, because taste is super subjective, and then a wine that I'm raving about might leave you totally unimpressed. But there are actual studies about this. So the Journal of Wine Economics did a study.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1076: Wine Fraud | Skeptical Sunday
They analyzed more than 4,000 wines that had been entered into 13 different competitions across the United States. And the researcher, he found that the probability of a wine winning a gold medal in one competition was completely statistically independent of whether it won a gold medal in any other competition. There is no correlation.