Here’s how Bill Koch sniffs out fake wine

Tucked away in a leafy grove in The University of Bordeaux is an incongruously modern research facility known as the Centre d'Etudes Nucleaires de Bordeaux Gradignan — CENBG — home to the sleek, wood-sided lab of physicist Philippe Hubert.
Hubert specialises in radioactivity, and the lab contains three detectors, the most impressive of which resembles a huge barrel wrapped in lead. The machine is traditionally used to evaluate wastewater from hospitals or fallout from nuclear disasters, but today it contains a bottle of the priceless wine, a 1905 Carruades de Lafite.

Hubert's task is to discern whether the wine is what it purports to be. Demand for this kind of authentication is booming.

"The market for fakes is growing," says Michael Egan, a former director of the wine department at Sotheby's and the world's foremost wine authenticator. "It does not show signs of slowing down."

In 2005, Bill Koch — the twin brother of Koch Industries executive David — realised he'd been had. Four bottles of 1787 Bordeaux turned out to be worthless fakes. Koch, 74, had paid $500,000 (Rs 3.04 crore) at an auction and decided, in light of the fraud, to conduct a sweeping examination of his 43,000-bottle cellar.

Koch's investigators identified 211 suspicious bottles consigned by Kurniawan — an Indonesian expat then living in Los Angeles.


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A sampling of the various vintages was shipped to the CENBG for testing. Not a single bottle passed.

Since then Koch intensified his personal crusade to stamp out wine fraud, which by his own estimate has cost him more than $25 million (Rs 152 crore)of his $4.3 billion fortune.

"Maybe it goes back to my childhood," Koch says. "I was cheated a lot when I was a weak and vulnerable boy." Koch spends more money on the scientific validation of a single bottle — up to $800 (Rs 48,664)— than most would dare spend on the wine itself.

Koch, who recently choked up while extolling the craft of the winemaker in a television interview, believes the incentive to end counterfeiting isn't strictly financial.

The current onslaught of imposter bottles detracts from the pleasures of a six-figure magnum. "It's sacrilegious," Koch says. "How would you feel if some guy burnt the Mona Lisa? I feel my love has been violated.".