In Vino Duplicitas by Peter Hellman

Author:Peter Hellman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The Experiment

Good times! Left to right: collector Eric Greenberg, Rudy Kurniawan, Hollywood agent Matthew Lichtenberg, auctioneer John Kapon. Image snapped in 2005.

In spring 2005, Greenberg and Kurniawan were again doing business together. In an email to the wine buyer for the Wynn Resorts hotel group in Las Vegas, Greenberg trumpeted a million-dollar offering from “the same Nicolas collection that went berserk at auction with Acker this past weekend.” This was a reference to lots consigned by Kurniawan to the Acker auction held in New York that April. “I own about 1.5M from this collection,” Greenberg wrote. “My partner bought $8 million worth. . . . [H]e has more that he will part with, and I am getting more for me and some others. I want to show you this first, for obvious reasons. . . . I am ordering a bunch more, and can get whatever you want immediately.”

Greenberg did not identify his “partner,” but it could only be Kurniawan. His offering to Wynn included 1947 Lafleur in bottle and magnum, 1961 Pétrus in bottle and magnum, and 1929 Romanée-Conti—all wines that Kurniawan had delivered to Greenberg the prior fall. Although these wines ranged from ultra-rare to effectively extinct, Greenberg also said he could get “a bunch more.”

Really, a bunch more? Veteran British wine writer Stephen Brook, in his book The Complete Bordeaux, writes that he has never tasted a Lafleur earlier than 1948. Neither does he mention ever sampling 1961 Pétrus. As for 1929 Romanée-Conti, Michael Broadbent, in two volumes comprising thousands of tasting notes spanning more than half a century, has just one note on this rarity—a bottle from the cellar of a ninety-year-old British painter with whom he shared it at a private dinner in 1968.

In the fall of 2005, a year after Kapon had returned rather than sell his Pomerol magnums and other rarities, Greenberg felt validated when Zachys agreed to sell seventeen thousand bottles from the embattled cellar under his house. Quite possibly, some of those rejected magnums were included. “I trusted Zachys more than I trusted Rudy Kurniawan, and it was at this stage that I realized that this guy had a problem,” Greenberg would testify.

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