Winebits 508: Wine fraud edition

This week’s wine news: Three cases of wine fraud from around the world, because $10 wine, apparently, isn’t enough for everyone

• Beware trophy wines: A big-time bond trader has accused a big-time Napa Valley retailer of selling him fake wine, and he wants $1 million from the retailer. The Wine Spectator (who else?) has all the juicy details, which include claims of criminal fraud, some top names in the history of Napa wine, and famous wines that are so rare that only a handful of people in the world get to see them these days. This is one of those times when it pays to drink Bogle; I don’t have to worry about anyone selling me a fake bottle.

• “Lavish wine trips”: How did three Dallas bankers allegedly indulge in the California wine lifestyle? Federal prosecutors say the trio stole $1.2 million; the money was spent on first-class airfare, luxury hotel rooms, expensive wine and restaurant dinners, and private wine tours in Sonoma and Santa Barbara. The Wine Curmudgeon has noted before that wine is not worth corruption charges; again, there’s so much nice wine that is affordable that there’s little reason to steal to buy more expensive wine.

• Even the English: A local church official stole more than £35,000 (almost US$50,000) from the restoration fund for a 12^th century English church, and he used some of the stolen money to buy 76 bottles of wine for a what was apparently one of the greatest lunches of all time. The Telegraph in London reports that the man “used his trusted position to siphon off … restoration funds to bankroll a luxury lifestyle.” The story does not detail the wine served at lunch, but anyone who would steal money from a church fund probably spent more than Prosecco from Lidl.