Chasing the illusive bottle – The Kurniawan effect

Fake wines have existed even before I was introduced to fine wines more than 25 years ago, but the Kurniawan case has more than indicated that the amount of fake bottles on the market is perhaps much higher than expected.

I will not speculate in the Kurniawan case, and mention other names, but it seems that many collectors lose all critical and logical senses in the hunt for the illusive and iconic bottle.

Likely fake – How many bottles were produced?

I have recently seen quite a lot of Henri Jayer wines consumed and being sold on the market. Not all of them are fakes, but the number of bottles appearing of Richebourg 1985 and other fine vintages of this and Cros Parantoux indicates that something is not right.

If we go 15 years back these wines could still be found in France in very small quantities. They were very rare … but I was lucky to taste a few, at prices that were reasonable i.e. around 200 EUR for Cros Parantoux 1988 at Lameloise in Chagny. Around 2003 the Jayer wines were gone in most restaurants, and since I have only seen very few very expensive bottles at restaurants in France.

When I follow the wine scene today I see these wines on a regular basis mainly in US and Asia, and while some of them could be genuine Jayer bottlings, it is likely that some or even most of them are fakes.

Firstly the production of the Jayer wines were quite small, and after 1985 even more limited due to the fact that some of the wines and vineyards returned to Meo-Camuzet label. And as we move on more and more of the production from the Jayer family vineyards were sold under the Emmanuel Rouget label.

Yes it’s true that Henri Jayer continued to sell wines after his initial retirement around 1995, and yes a part of his private cellar was sold on auction by his family, but still the supply was very limited indeed after 1996. Only 644 bottles and 100 magnums were sold on the auction in Hongkong – for more info about the auction – check Christies website

Example: Henri Jayer Richebourg 1985

The total area of Meo-Camuzets Richebourg holdings (Jayer produced his Richebourg on these vinyards) is 0.35 ha, and given the same yield as DRC Richebourg (11.006 bottles produced in 1985 on 3.51 ha of Richebourg), the Meo plots produced around 1100 bottles in 1985. Some of these were bottled under the Meo-Camuzet label, while others were bottled by Henry Jayer. I don’t know the split, but it’s fair to assume that the number of Jayer bottles is in the range 500 to 800 in a vintage like 1985.

This is very limited indeed and the likelyhood that these bottles occur on the market and in restaurants these days is very small indeed.

There are always a chance that these bottles are genuine Jayer wines, but it should be noted that according to reports from the Kurniawan case – Richebourg 1985 is mentioned as one of the wines found at Kurniawans place – and just before he got arrested in 2008 he tried to sell four bottles of Henri Jayer Richebourg 1985.

The presumably “new” old bottles

Furthermore I have seen quite a lot of pictures of old Jayer bottles (vintages before 1980) looking almost brand new – with pristine labels and what looks like almost new top labels and foils.

This could be true if these wines were released from the domaine within the last decade, but that is not very likely – as Jayer died in 2006 and presumably had very limited stocks of the top wines in old vintages.

It’s important to note that estate bottlings of old vintages of Jayer are extremely rare, as he also sold quite a large part of his wines by the barrel until the mid 1970s.

According to Christies website 1978 was the first vintage where he bottled the whole production himself and 1976 was the first vintage where Jayer bottled much of his production himself. Before this a large proportion of the Jayer wines were bottled by négociants ranging from Alexis Lichine in the United States to négociants in Belgium.

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