“I saw a collection that was entirely fake, and it had been put together 20 to 30 years ago,” she said. “There are very well-known count...
“I saw a collection that was entirely fake, and it had been put together 20 to 30 years ago,” she said. “There are very well-known counterfeits that keep popping up. “
It is difficult to get reliable statistics on the extent of the problem. Ms. Graham-Yooll dismissed as hyperbolic a 2018 study claiming that up to a third of all rare single malt bottles were fake. But she admitted that counterfeiting is a big problem and is getting worse.
There is no shortage of anecdotes such as the meeting in Acker. In 2017 a swiss hotel attracted attention for selling the world’s most expensive dram to a Chinese tourist. Subsequent analysis of the liquid, which was believed to be single malt scotch made by the Macallan Distillery in 1878, showed it to be blended scotch made sometime after 1970.
Like the Acker bottle, the fake Macallan had some obvious flaws to an expert eye: the wrong stopper, modern glass. Partly because the area of counterfeiting is so new, Herz said, spotting counterfeits is not difficult – drip stains on a paper label, for example, are a good indication that the bottle has already been used.
“Most people are lazy and impatient,” he said.
The whiskey business has yet to see its version of Rudy Kurniawan, the prolific and highly skilled counterfeiter whose 2013 conviction for making and selling millions of dollars in precisely detailed fake burgundy and California cabernet rocked the wine world.
But it may only be a matter of time. Experts say they have seen an increase in the quality of counterfeits; Mr. Herz suspects that at least a few counterfeiters have internal connections in Kentucky distilleries, allowing them to make fake bottles from scratch, with crisp labels and expertly designed closures.
A cottage industry has emerged in response, particularly in Britain, promising high-tech countermeasures like chemical analysis through glass, which allows sellers and collectors to assess a bottle’s authenticity. without having to open it. But these are still in development and years of widespread use.
COMMENTS