October 15, 2015 • 47 mins
Wine fraud may be a case of rich con artists tricking wealthy people into parting with money, but it's still a crime. Learn all about this weird, widespread practice in today's episode.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from the house stuff
Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Josh Clark. There's Child's w Chuck Bryant, and No little
Bit even is stuff you should Know. Man, that coffee
smells good? You want something? Have a sip? No, I'm fine,
(00:23):
but it's just I just love that smells so nice,
even though I don't drink much coffee. Oh yeah, I'm
with you. You know, it's just a delicious smell. Sometimes
I'll go to a department store and just walk through
the fragrant aisle and just smell the coffee samples they have. Well,
I thought you were gonna say you got through the
lingerie and just brush up against things after the coffee.
(00:44):
So after the coffee sniffing is done and I can't
smell anything anymore, right, How are you? Thanks for outing me? Man?
It's creepy. Yeah, you know, I'm sure there's weirdos out
there who do that. Are you kidding me? There's probably
websites dedicated to it. Yeah, I'm fine. Good. Good? Do
(01:07):
you like wine? I love wine? How do you know,
Chuck that the wine you're drinking, it's actually the wine
you're thinking is because nobody bothers to fraudently rip off
bottle of one. Not true. Yeah, there's a famous issue
in the world of wine fraud. Watch people okay um
(01:31):
from Tesco, which is I think it's just a straight
up like supermarket Kim in Britain, I saw that. Actually, yeah,
you're right, And there was a louis Ja dough which
normally goes for about fifteen pounds. It was selling on
sale for five pounds. That's a good deal. But one
of the guys who purchased it contacted some people who
are into wine and said, I think this is phony
because the label looks like it's a photo copy. So
(01:54):
somebody was doing knock off louis Ja dough which normally
goes for not that much, and old at t Tesco,
who was in turn selling it. And this is a
huge thing. Man. There's a big, big debate even still
and just how widespread wine fraud is. And it's really
difficult to get to the bottom of because there's so
many people who have their fingers in this fraudulent pot,
(02:17):
whether wittingly or unwittingly, in either way, are unwilling to
admit that it's as extensive as it is, or the
people who are burned are making a bigger deal out
of it than they are than it really is, because
they have the money in the context to get CBS
to do a story on how they got burned by
buying some fake wine. So it's not entirely clear how
(02:40):
widespread it is. But there have been some really great,
very famous but almost proven stories of outright wine fraud.
But it's a pretty new phenomenon. Uh. Well, if you
think ancient Roman is pretty new, let's hear it man.
Well that's I mean there ever since there was wine,
(03:01):
people were making fake wine or trumping it up as
something other than it was. So the newer practice, like
you can divide it into two things. There was an
ancient room they were doing stuff like this and adding
like lead to wine to sweeten it while they were
killing people. Uh. But then there's the new practice of like, hey,
(03:22):
this is a Thomas Jefferson bottle of wine and you
con bided a Christie's auction for a hundred thousand dollars
and it's really not that at all. Do you remember
back in the eighties, Um, I think reu Needy was
adding like when you wipe a fluid or something. Yeah,
it was at the very least an urban legend. More recently,
there was something added to wine to make it sweeter
(03:43):
that was really bad for you. But I don't know,
I can't confirm if it was that case or not.
This was specifically reu Needy in the eighties. And it again,
it could have just been an urban legend because at
the same time that there were spiders eggs in bubble yum.
You know, yeah, there was a lot of like a
consumer uh panic. I think yeah, it was a golden
age for urban legends. Yeah, agreed. Uh. And you know what,
(04:06):
we need to do one on wine period. Yes, this
is so us. Yeah, we'll do episodes on everything but
the actual thing, and then we'll finally get to the thing. Uh.
And we could also probably do a completely separate podcast
on wine tasting, because man, that's a really bitter pill,
(04:26):
because there are some people who say there really is
no difference in these wines, and there have been numerous
occasions over the years where jerks have set up wine
tasters to fail by just switching out wines and saying
this is a really nice bot or what's really crappy,
and they say whoa, this is lovely. The tannons are
(04:47):
really coming in. It's jammie and full, and they're like,
you're drinking too buck chuck um stuff that. It's a
big bone of contention with wine drinkers and also people
who like to poop poo that and say it's all
subjective and you're all just snooty and either really is
no difference, but there really is a difference. Well, okay,
so there is a like you say, there's there's a
(05:08):
big debate over that, right, um, But if you if
you dive into the world of high end vintage wine collecting,
it is very um. It's like an aura borus, right,
that snake that eats its own tail, in that the
people who are in charge of judging whether something's real
(05:31):
or not are basing that on their previous experiences, which
may or may not have been an experience with a
fraudulent wine. So even if you can tell the difference,
if you've only been exposed to, say, fraudulent eighteen century wine,
then when you are asked to judge a bottle of
(05:51):
like eighteenth century wine, you're gonna compare it to that,
And if it's ultimately coming from the same counterfeitter. You
will be like, yes, this is the real thing, because
I've had that before and it tastes like that. Well yeah,
and here's the other thing. Is there there is vintage,
uh appropriately aged wine that is tastes great because it
(06:14):
has aged in such a way. And then there are
these super old bottles that apparently it tastes like canned
asparagus is the note that it brings out, And these
don't even taste that good. It's just the fact that
you can own it and show people. You don't even
drink it. In most cases, you don't drink at Jefferson wine.
(06:35):
You have it in your collection. So some say, look
at my collection. Exactly. That's the whole point a lot
of people are. For a lot of people, that's the
whole point. It's just own this bottle. It's like owning
a piece of Thomas Jefferson and you get to show
off and and tell people how great you are. Right exactly. So, Um,
that's how a lot of wine counterfeiting has gotten away
with because the people are never going to open the wine.
(06:57):
So whatever tampering you did with the the seal is
never going to be discovered. Um, they're never gonna taste
the wine inside, so it could be two buck chalk
or whatever. Won't see the cork. Yeah. Um, and they're
just they're just happy to have this thing and their
status to be elevated to the point where they don't
really want to know if it's a counterfeit, so long
(07:20):
as they can walk around and tell people. This is
Thomas Jefferson. Right, Well, we should go ahead and start
talking about Bill Coke. He is uh, one of the
other brothers. He is not Charles or David Coke of
the famous uh Republican Coke brothers, fame billionaire supporters of
(07:40):
the Republican Party. Yeah. Yeah, sure, she's saying that's like
the nicest way to describe them. Yeah, it is. Uh.
He is the brother, one of the brothers who got
out along with another brother. Um, but not another brother
from another mother. No, they are the same mother, right right, Okay, Yeah,
he got out of the family business and said, you
(08:02):
know what, um, a billionaire, I'm gonna what I'm gonna
do is I'm gonna start collecting really rare and expensive things. Um.
One thing he has is a gun collection. He owns
Custer's rifle, Billy the Kid's pistol. Does he he owns
the gun that killed Jesse James. Oh, I'm sorry, is
Jesse James Pistol? And that gun and that what was
(08:22):
his name? Robert Ford? Yeah? And that was a good movie.
Boy was it really good? Beautifully shot as well Wide
Rupe's rifle, Doc Holiday's rifle. He has a lot of
vintage guns. He has a lot of very famous works
of art like original Picassos and monaise As exactly. He
(08:44):
sounds like a big sucker to me. And he also
owns uh as this article says several hundred bottles of
what he calls moose piss. Yeah, that's what he calls it.
He said. He Well, he's saying that for all he knows.
That's what's inside. He got duped very famously, many many times. Yeah,
and he has had many many lawsuits over the years
(09:04):
that have come out. This guy loves suing people. He
does what he calls dropping subpoena is on people. Yeah,
he sues people almost recreationally. He drops the subpoena on
their head. Yeah, what a guy. So he um he
Bill Coke again very famously, he's probably the most famous
(09:24):
victim of wine fraud. M because he sues everybody he
possibly can who may or may not have sold them
a fake. Really takes it personally, and he really goes
after people. UM. And he did a lot of media
about this too, so he's very famous for this. UM.
And he brought in some wine experts and said, here
are thirty thousand, forty thousand bottles of wine that I
(09:48):
have in my sellers. How many are fake? And they
just took a random sample of three tho bottles. He
kidding me, No, they said exactly, They're like, we'll bill
you for this. UM. They took a random sample of
three thousand bottles and it yielded a hundred and thirty fakes.
So I mean he has hundreds and hundreds and hundreds
(10:10):
by by extension of fake bottles of wine in his cellar.
And that was actually, that's about on par with what
the average not necessarily uninitiated or uneducated wine buyer, but
fervent vintage wine buyer would have that about four million
(10:34):
dollars seller, about a million of it will be on fakes. Yeah,
and he supposedly spent close to five million dollars on
fake wine over the past quarter century, UM, including some
of those Jefferson's that we'll talk about. Uh and a
lot of this wine came from a man named Rudy
Uh crnia Oh that's good stuff. It's even better than
(10:57):
I had in my head, you crniawan. I like that,
I think. And this guy was one of the most
famous um really alongside another guy that we'll talk about,
one of the most famous wine fraud discs, fraudster, fraudster, counterfeitters,
counterfeitters of all time um And he was sentenced to
(11:17):
ten years in prison and supposedly was to pay close
to fifty million dollars in damages, which is easily what
he made by selling fake wine. In two sales in
two thousand and six, he made thirty six million dollars
selling fake wine. What a jerk. And it's easy to
(11:38):
sit back. And the fence team even used this in
court to say, ah, these are rich guys, like no harm,
no foul, who cares very if you're ripping off the rich.
And I even found myself kind of thinking that. But
at the end of the day, who it's wrong, it's wrong,
it's wrong. Sure, I mean, like I wouldn't do it.
I wouldn't sell a counterfeit bottle of wine. Yeah, it's wrong,
(12:01):
it's illegal, and it's it's gross. And just because you're
ripping off the rich, it's not like he's Robin Hood
and giving that then to the poor. You know he was.
I didn't have the idea that he was doing that.
Plus Um, Dave Rugs, who wrote this, made this point,
but I take issue with it that ultimately vintage counterfeit
(12:22):
wine fraud affects all wine drinkers because that stuff trickles down.
I don't think that's true because from reading this um.
There were two really great long form articles that this
article was partially based on. One was in The New
Yorker and one was on Vanity Fair, and both of
them were totally worth reading. UM. But just from reading
(12:45):
those you get the impression that those are two very
different worlds. That the world of like just regular wine
appreciation and vintage wine collection form of ven diagram that
just barely overlaps, and that one really does not affect
the economy the economics of the other. So if there's
(13:07):
a bunch of counterfeit stuff going on in the vintage
wine world, it probably wouldn't drive up prices for the
wine that you're buying that's you know, ten years old tops.
So I don't think that that's necessarily true. His point
that we all shoulder the burden that counterfeiters do because
these two worlds are so divorced. But even still, like
(13:27):
if you were a people are losing money and reputations
are being built up and lost. You know, I get that.
All right, Well, let's take a little break and we'll
come back and uh, we'll talk about the two ways
that you can generally go about trying to fake a wine.
(14:02):
All right, we're back, We're drunk on wine. I wish
what's your favorite wine? Uh? My favorite wines are big
bodied California cabernets generally, like not a specific like wine maker.
If that's what you're asking, I'm not gonna like, yeah,
(14:23):
there's no wrong answer. Yeah no, Well that was that
funny because it made me think of fat bottom girls,
that Queen song big bodied California Ca. Yeah, it just
potts in my head and I laughed like a goon. Yeah,
I'm like really full bodied wines, zimpandels and cabernets. Yeah,
I think California is just they're doing it right. You know,
(14:44):
they say petitzeras the Rodney danger field of the wine world.
I've heard that. So if you're gonna go about faking
a wine, um, you uh, there are two things you
can do. You can either fake the wine inside a
real bottle or you can fake the bottle real wine. Yeah,
and it's all real wine. You know, it's different vintage
(15:04):
maybe yeah, but like it could be like a really
nice seven wine that you say it's actually from nineteen
fourteen or even one. I mean, like it could be
within a couple of years. It just depends on on
whether it was a good year or if the if
there's a scarcity of it, that kind of stuff. And
actually Bill Cook makes a pretty good point. His whole
(15:26):
thing is he wants to have I think a hundred
and fifty years of Lafitte or some some house, like
every single vintage that they released of every single variety
over the course of a hundred and fifty years, which
is extremely ambitious. And he said it's easy to get
the really prized ones because those are the ones that
(15:48):
like people saved in all that. He said, it's the
mediocre years that are old that nobody bothered to say
this drank and threw away the bottle or just didn't
keep it. Those are the ones that he has the
most trouble. Fine, or they did skeet shooting. They just
had the servants stowed up in the air and they
shot him with shotguns. That's what they do. Richie Riches, Uh, well,
you make a good point too, because Colonie Allen, although
(16:10):
he dealt in the super high echelon, he would also
take a two bottle of wine and fake it to
be like a thousand dollar bottle. Yeah, he did it
both ways. He would he would take out, he would
take an old bottle, legitimate real bottle, put in his
own mix of wine and cork it again and and
make it look like it had never been open. Or
(16:31):
like you said, he would take just say, a forty
seven Lafitte and mess with the label to make it
look like a forty one Lafitte, which would be worth
ten times that what the forty seven Lafitte would be worth. Right,
And clearly, I also want to point out Lafitte is
obviously the only fancy wine that I'm familiar with, because
that's my go too. So if you guys are out
(16:52):
there and you're getting the impression that I know what
I'm talking about as far as wine goes, you have
been duped. Well, you're not a big wine guy. You're
on sortis such, I like wine. I'm I'm definitely not
a wine guy exactly. Yeah. Uh, and I'm that wine
guy either. I'm I'm at the very I'm wine guy
in the brest sense of the word. I like really
(17:14):
good wines. I like going to wineries. But I'm certainly
no like. I'm not saying I have some amazing palette.
I can't pick out vanilla notes and things like that.
I'm just like, man, this tastes really good for up
bottle of it. And I tend to fall into that
camp where I'm certain that there are people out there,
literal tastemakers who can tell the difference between wine and
(17:37):
I've had wine that I didn't like before, I've had
wine that I do like. Um, But I fall into
the camp where I'm ultimately like, it's it's whatever you appreciate.
It's no hierarchy, there doesn't need to be. Um. You know,
a two thousand dollar bottle is not necessarily going to
taste as good as a twenty dollar bottle. That that
(17:58):
you the whole thing is just about individual enjoyment, and
he kind of snobbery associated with it to me just
misses the point. Yeah, here's my deal is, I can
really tell the difference between what I would consider cheap
wine and like a decent bottle or a good bottle.
But that's where my taste level max is out. I
can't tell the difference between a two bottle and at bottle,
(18:23):
But if you gave me like a six dollar bottle,
you can. You can taste the difference. It's between that
and like bottle. Yeah, but even then, if that's what
you like, that's what you like. I'm not poo, It's
just not what I want, you know. Oh man, a
lot of caveats there. So um, we were talking about
Rudy kay yeah, and how to how to he faked
(18:45):
wines and he was He got real bottles correct in general,
and made his own wine concoctions. Here's what this dude
did right to get to the point where he could
even counterfeit. Yes, he got his hands on real stuff
and he ran up some serious, serious bar tabs while
he was doing it. There's a very um legendary story
(19:07):
of him hooking up with this guy who was the
head of wine sales at a um a an auction
house called Acker Meryll. They factor in big time into
this guy's ascent and Rudy Kay's counterfeit ascent, not weddingly necessarily,
(19:27):
but they they let him use their reputation to build
his own. But he did it by duping them by
throwing like these crazy parties at like um at um
restaurants and having like two fifty thousand dollar tabs, picking
up the tab himself. But then after everybody left, going
(19:47):
to the staff at the restaurant being like, mail me
every single one of those bottles, and they go, well, okay,
it's your wine, but that's weird. Not enough to make
mention of it, but it was odd to them. His
big thing was that he did it at the same
place over and over again, so they did start to notice.
But while he was doing this, he was also collecting wine,
(20:08):
to really expensive vintage wine, and there was already a
market for it, but it didn't look anything like the
market that he built almost himself. He drove the value
of vintage wine up almost singlehandedly by buying up as
many bottles of old stuff as he could um And
while he was doing that, he was building his reputation.
(20:29):
He was making connections and he was getting his hands
on legitimate wine that he could use to resell now
that the market was up at a higher price after
he had already consumed it. It say like a party. Yeah.
And one thing he was doing that tipped off some
people early on was um. Like you were saying, he
was buying off years of good vintages, great vintages, to
(20:53):
where there was one guy who thinks Jeffrey Troy was
his name. He was a wine merchant and he said
he was buying these good bottles for French Burgundy, but
they weren't great, they were off years, and it was
just if he was a collector, it was just weird
to buy these, uh, and to be adamant about buying
these because he could get him for cheaper and fake
them easier exactly, like he could just kind of smudge
(21:14):
the year and all of a sudden it's a much
more expensive vintage. Um. So he's he's driving the market up.
He's buying legitimate wine. Apparently he's taking out loans that
he defaulted on to to build this reputation of his UM.
And so when the market hits he starts counterfeiting, And
there was one story that actually was pretty prominent in
(21:37):
the Vanity Fair article where he was apparently confused. He thought,
and there's no way that any of us would have
ever thought this, but he thought that a Ponceau close St.
Denis was the same thing as the Christine Ponceau close St. Denis. Right,
(21:57):
he was way off. So it turns out that he
figured that ponce Uh made this wine in Burgundy in
the forties because Christine ponce so close end and he's
made this wine in the forties. Turns out that the
regular Ponceo, the very famous Ponceau family made their close
end any starting in the eighties, so that he actually
(22:21):
got found out because of this one mistake. This led
to his unraveling, and he was going to auction or
sell about like nine bottles of this stuff that was
overtly counterfeit. It had never existed, which also said a
lot about the collectors at the time too, because they
were covening and paying for wine that they never even
heard of it strictly because these these people were attached
(22:45):
to it. It's pretty amazing, it really is. And that's
how he was able to get away with it. For
so long because that dinner, the guy Ponceau himself, um,
the guy who was the proprietor of the vineyard, showed
up at that dinner, flew from Paris to I think
New York to be at the dinner to make sure
that they didn't auction off those things because he knew
they were counterfeit. And Rudy Kay still was left to
(23:07):
just keep going for years after that because because of reputations. Well,
and like you said, he had built up this reputation,
which is a big part of it. Um, you have
to be a true con artist. You can't just go
in there, uh and say, I've got all these Jefferson wines.
I'm chuck. You know, you have to be known in
the community, and it takes a long time, and they
(23:28):
have to think that right, Yeah, I have to think
you have money, real money. What he did, No, he
borrowed it all. Well, I thought he came for money.
That was well, he had money at one point. He
borrowed oh no, but then he made a lot, right,
So think about this. I think he defaulted on a
three or four million dollar loan and then another one
(23:49):
or two million dollar loan, and then he also borrowed
privately from other like wine collectors that he knew. But
even still, let's say he borrowed ten million dollars that
he defaulted, he may tens intens intens more millions thirty
four million dollars in one year just from two sales. Yeah,
and he currently is appealing his conviction UM on the
(24:12):
grounds that uh that when when he was arrested, he
was arrested on his front porch. Then they searched his
house and they said you can't do that. That That they
got the the search warrant afterward, and he said, well
you can't do that. There should I should have never
been searched. And it's looking like they're saying, now you
know what they had reasonable uh doubt. Uh said yeah exactly.
(24:35):
So I don't think the appeal is going to go anywhere.
But this is as recently as like this year. I
think he's still appealing. But he got ten years, right, yeah,
ten years man, Um, So he got caught and he
got caught red hand, red handed. It sounds like UM
and the people who were attached to him that helped
built up this market definitely suffered uh some dings to
(24:59):
their reputation. But are saying like, we had no idea,
we trusted this guy, we were duped too, and UM
to their to their merit acker, meryll Um offered like, uh,
money back guarantees on anything that was considered found to
be fake and and paid up on it after one auction. Well,
(25:19):
one of the guys Coke is suing is uh. I
can't remember his name, but he supposed supposedly. He's like,
I didn't know I was selling you fake wine, like
I got duped, and he's saying, no, you knew. So
they were trying to prove whether or not this guy
actually knew. And so that's that's another part of that
debate where how widespread is this, who knows what um?
(25:40):
And who's like how far do you go back before
you find the person who did it? Right, So we'll
talk about one other person who allegedly did it right
after this break. So, Chuck, there's another man, very famous
(26:10):
man in the wine world. His name is Hardy Hardy
roden Stock, but I don't believe that's his real name.
His real name is what mine heart, that's right, what
a name, that's his given name, But he goes by
Hardy roden Stock and has since the seventies and he
(26:33):
to be a truly great wine counterfeitter, not only do
you have to build up a reputation as rich and
um willing to crack bottles of ridiculously expensive, um historically
valuable wine at parties where there's wine critics and auctioneers
(26:56):
and wine experts, um. But you also have to have
a certain love for wine. I think Rudy kay definitely
loved wine. Yes, they but they all have. But yeah,
and Hardy Rodenbach definitely does too. And apparently there's there's
a big question about whether he is one of the
better wine mixers on the planet. Yeah, because that's that's
(27:19):
a real job, where like like someone will work at
a winery and they'll take a little bit of this
and a little bit of that, and then all of
a sudden you've got there. Yeah, they're they're they're blend.
Some blends are better than others. Apparently Rodenstock is a
master blender if he is in fact a counterfeiter. This
article on how stuff works make it makes it sound
like Bill Coke's hired FBI gun closed the book and
(27:41):
like it's done. But it's never been proven in a
court of law. That Rodenstock actually um was this counterfeiter
and he still denies the allegations. Well, the circumstantial evidence
is pretty pretty substantial. Yeah, I mean I think the
only reason is because he refuses to come to America
to go to court, you know. But there's no criminal
(28:03):
Prosecution's all civil as far as I understand. Yeah, I
think that's the case. So he was a former music
manager and um, he I think they're making him. There's
a book called The Billionaires Vinegar about this about the
Jefferson wines that they're making into a movie with McConaughey.
Of course, does he play Bill Coke or Hardy roden Stock.
(28:25):
I don't know who he's playing, or does he just
kind of like wander around days in the background he's
the wine maker man. Uh yeah, I'm not sure who
he's playing actually, But it was a big book and
it was about the famous Jefferson wines and basically the
deal is Thomas Jefferson, as we all know, was way
into wine, way into France. UM, a big francophile and
(28:50):
he had either bottles in his collection or he had
his own vintage as well. Um, Thomas Jefferson wines and
very famously, Hardens stock was rooted out allegedly. I guess
do we have to say that as faking these Jefferson bottles. Yeah? Um,
he would force you know, you're supposed to spit out
when you're drinking wine tasting. He would. He would I
(29:13):
don't know about force, but highly encourage his guests to swallow,
so they would be drunker by the time they got
to the real good stuff at the end, which is
and again, so it's unusual to force your guests to
drink rather than spit out the wine at a tasting party.
And then it's also unusual to bring out your best
stuff at the end because everybody knows your palette is
(29:33):
saturated and you can't really tell the difference anyway. Well,
if you've ever been on a wine tour and go
to like several wineries, you definitely at the last winery
you're like, give me a case. Is great. Yeah. So
when he's throwing these parties in these tastings, again, he's invited,
and they're very smart to invite wine experts, wine critics,
(29:55):
wine journalists. It's an event. It is an event. And
again all these people think that this dude, it is
just this eccentric, extraordinarily rich dude who is literally opening
to drink and share with them. He's wonderful, these these
people who are peons compared to this man. He's such
a great man because he's opened a seventeen eighties seven
(30:15):
bottle of Thomas Jefferson's wine and he's given me a glass.
I've got to go right about it. I got to
talk about how great Hardy roden Stock is. So it's
very smart to have surrounded himself with the people he did. Yeah.
So his story was that he said, um, he claimed
that he found a batch of Jefferson bottles behind a
brick wall in a Paris Parisian basement that he still
(30:37):
hasn't revealed where this is a little suspicious. Uh. And
then if you already got all the wine out of there, yeah, exactly. Uh.
And then he and uh, he went and sold a
lot of these two people like Coke and Christopher Forbes
and other billionaires for um, hundreds of thousands of dollars
per bottle. And I think they were like about a
hundred and twenty bottle. Yeah, it's a ton of money.
(31:00):
And um, they were fakes and it was all it
all came down to a little matter of punctuation, which
is hysterical to me that Thomas Jefferson bottles. Um. Well,
first of all, he kept really meticulous records because he
was so into wine. Jefferson. Yeah, so on the bottles,
chuck it said, and it was engraved t H period
(31:24):
capital J period. Right. Supposedly, Jefferson, when he wrote his initials,
it would be t H colon capital J period. So
that fatal flaw of the matter of punctuation is what
gave him away. Basically, Yeah, well there's a larger question too.
So the idea that Thomas Jefferson would have his bottles
(31:45):
engraved was based on a letter, a verified letter. Um.
It was an order that Jefferson placed for French wine
on behalf of himself and George Washington, Which makes these
bottles even more amazingly awesome because they think, well, these
came from an order that Jefferson placed, that we're also
in George Washington's shipment as well, and that they they
(32:09):
they needed to be separated out by initials. But if
you step back and you think they wouldn't go in
and grave all the bottles, they just marked the crates
that the bottles came in. This create goes to George,
this crate goes to Jefferson because he was ordering it
by the case, not by the bottle. So the idea
that the bottles would be engraved is also dubious in
(32:29):
and of itself. But Monticello historians are like, number one,
he this is wrong the way that this is engraved,
that's not how he would have done it. And secondly,
there's no records in all of we have the records
for this era, and there's nothing in there about these
vintages being in Monicello or being ordered by Jefferson. And
(32:51):
then also, um, once Bill Coke put his FBI dude
on the on the case, it turns out that it's
likely that this this engraving was done by modern instruments. Yeah,
he hired a guy named an ex fed named Jim
McElroy or I'm sorry, Jim Elroy and Royal, I guess,
because so he hired this guy, paid him a lot
(33:13):
of money, I imagine, to try and do some digging
on this. And one of their first lines of defense
was there's something called uh cesium dash one seven, and
that is UH a radioactive isotope that exists because it's
a product of nuclear fission of uranium. So it didn't
(33:33):
exist until we started doing that, before we started launching
nuclear bomb explosion tests. Yeah, exactly. Uh, now it exists,
and you can actually test for this stuff, so if
you find you know it basically can date something back
to However, in the case of harden Stock, he was
smart enough at least to use wine older than so
(33:56):
that didn't really help him much. Yeah, and I wonder
if he just surely he is lucked out because I
wonder if that Caeson test was around when he did this,
because this he supposedly found him in eighty five and
started selling him immediately. Yeah, who knows, maybe got lucky
or maybe he just was like, I need to use
some really old, nice wine, yeah, to at least try
and get away with it. So again there's like and
(34:17):
then there. One other part of the case against him
was that he had a tenant once at his family's
house who had an apartment near his. In the house
and in the basement, the tenant said that he saw
like basically tons of empty bottles and um stacks of
labels and all this stuff, which to the tenant meant, well,
(34:39):
this guy's forging wine. Right, that's a little more. That's
probably what I would think. I hope he doesn't go
by my recycling every Wednesday here wine counterfeitter, it could be. Uh,
So there are a lot of there's nothing you can
do about these these old um, I mean, you can
have people inspect them and try and verify them, but
(35:02):
there's really nothing you can do as a like a
full proof method. But really nice wineries now arguing there
are a lot of methods you can do now for
future generations of wine fraud. Yeah, for the vintage stuff
you're s o l Basically, you just have to really
trust where it's coming from. Probably hire an expert and
um maybe stay away from rodent stock if you're Bill Coke. Right,
(35:25):
that's right. But there Yeah, like you said, the modern
guys are using things like um R f I D tags,
um QR codes that you scan and it takes you
to a website or something. Microchips like you have in
your dog. Yeah, so you can track the actual bottle.
There's also like tamper proof um capsules, the that the
(35:45):
wine is encased in the bottle's neck that when that's
open it changes color. If it's ever been opened and
some actually alert the internet or I guess back home
at head Court the Internet once it's been open. And
there's another one that's pretty cool. There's this company that
(36:06):
inserts a specific DNA marker into like the ink on
the label that can't be counterfeit, and that they can
go back and later and be like, no, this is real.
At the very least, we know the labels real. And
rudy case case, he had a bunch of credit card
charges for glue and labels and ink, and he, I
(36:27):
mean he had a pretty nice trail of evidence behind him. Yeah,
I was not very smart with it. Well, I mean,
if his apartment was just a counterfeiting factor. And then
lastly checked the one of the pieces of evidence that
a lot of people point to when they say that
um wine fraud is a big deal um is eBay. Yeah.
(36:47):
You can go on eBay and spend a hundred bucks
on a empty bottle that, if it weren't empty, would
go for a thousand or ten thousand or whatever. And
the idea behind it, of course, is that somebody's alling
it up and putting it back on the market as
a counterfeit. Why would someone sell that that reason to
(37:08):
make a hundred bucks on a ten dollar bottle of wine.
Some people love money. I don't know. It just seems
like a lot of just people who buy that kind
of wine. I don't picture them going on eBay and
running auctions over It makes you wonder also if like
those are people who they're like, they're just working at
a restaurant and well, that's what it sounds like to me,
(37:29):
and take that home and put it on anybay. The
servant throws the uh you know, cleans up after the
dinner party. Yeah, that's what I figure what's going on?
And apparently a lot of restaurants now because of guys
like Rudy Kay and uh Hardy Roads Road and stock
now um smash vintage bottles once the wine has been
ordered and drunk with. Well with the shotgun in the
(37:51):
skeet shooting, I got one last thing. Supposedly there were
only five Magnums Fleur produced. Uh. Between two thousand five
and two thousand seven, eighteen magnums of seven La Fleur
were sold at auction. That's so easy to How can
(38:13):
that happen? That's so easy to check when there's only
five of something. The argument is that either the guy
who works at La Fleur and did in seven and says, no,
there was only five magnums doesn't remember because the record
keeping in like Burgundy is terrible back in the day.
Um or that the there's just no will. There's so
(38:35):
much of a market for counterfeit wine, and there's not
enough pressure being put on the people who are actually
selling it or allowing it to happen, that it's just whatever.
And supposedly now that America has gotten more and more savvy,
this counterfeit market is moving over to China, so where
there's like a lot of wealth coming up and not
a lot of wine education, and people are just getting
(38:57):
taken for rides. Man, good stuff. Yeah, this is a
good one man, good pick. If you want to know
more about wine fraud, you can type those words in
the search bar how stu works dot com? And I
said the search bar, Chuck, what is it? Time for
Facebook questions? All right? Sometimes we pool questions from Facebook
(39:21):
to answer them. That's what we're doing now. This is
from Diane Martin. Diane F. Martin, uh cent, your podcasts
are essentially what would be called literature reviews and research lingo.
How do you decide which references to include an exclude.
Use any kind of quality indicators to decide what you
will and will include, especially when they're deeply debated. This
(39:41):
is a good question. Um, we've talked about our research process.
I think we tried to use peer review journals and
what I mean, if we find something on the internet,
we try and double and triple check that information. I know,
a big giveaway. You always talk about as if it's
the same exa thing printed a bunch. That's usually a
sign that it could be bogus, like Rodney danger Field
(40:04):
being in the Scout in the movie The Scout, but
it still bears mentioning. You just have to mention it
with the caveat you don't find it credible, but it's
out there because it doesn't. It exists in some form
of fashion. Uh, scientific journals, medical journals, I mean, pure
of you. It's just a great way to go if
(40:24):
you can get your hands on it. I remember this
great article called like why is Science behind a Paywall?
About the basically the cart the science publishing cartel. But
if you can't get your hands on on perio of stuff,
that's the best stuff to work with. Agreed, go ahead.
Another question. Yeah, Chuck for me, this is from Shane Elliott.
(40:49):
I knew I think you meant no. This question will
find a special place in Chuck's heart. What are your
favorite types and kinds of beers? And why do you
brew your own beer? And so body he else said
recently on Twitter that you said in the beer episode
that you're gonna get into homebrewing. Did you ever? So
that's a two part question for you, Chuck from Twitter
and Facebook. Well, you're a beer guy too. I like,
(41:11):
I do not brew my beer, but on the record,
is really liking I p a s. I know there's
a backlash going on now because there's so many of
them and people are like, there's other kinds of beers
in the world. I PAS tastes like soap I love.
I love anything that's super hoppy. Yeah, I do. I
just that's what I like. Our friend Dave dropped by
(41:31):
yeah Sweetwater, sweetwater and brought us some hot hash. I
haven't tried it yet, have you, no, but his all
that stuff is good. Sweetwater does a great job. And
we've always both kind of agreed that, uh, Sierra Nevada
Palele is one of the great all time, but there's
so many great ones. Bells too hearted, I love oh man,
(41:52):
that might be the best ever. Yeah, and that plenty
of the elder we got sent some of that. That
was delicious. Um Oh here in Athens, Georgia, Creature comforts tropically,
I've not had that one delicious um orfe Is Brewing
is here in Atlanta, and they make a sour that
I tried that was really really good. I'm not into
(42:13):
the sours. Have you tried it sours? Yeah? Yeah, I
loved it. I don't get it weird that I was like,
this is kind of good. Yeah. It was weird in
a good way, because sometimes weird can just be novel
and you're like, Okay, I tried that, it's done. This
is I mean, I like it. Yeah. I don't like
wheat beers, Belgian whites. Not a fan. All right, there's
(42:38):
your answer, fish Bowl. Now I'm thirsty, Jackson Blig. Other
than Atlanta, what are your top five favorite cities each? Geez,
New York, San Francisco, Seattle? Do they have to be
American cities? Serious? Uh? In that case, then I'll throw
(42:59):
in Paris and uh London, look at me, Well, fancy,
I know. Uh let's see. I love Hiroshima, Japan is
a really neat city, so it's Kyoto. I'm gonna make
those tied for one though. Of course. New York, Um,
(43:20):
let's see you where I like d see a lot too. Yeah,
that's a great town. Um, Rome, Italy is surprisingly neat. Surprisingly,
what are you getting? I mean it's a major cities, yeah,
and it's packed with people, so you would think like
it's a city, but it also has I mean like
you're just walking along the street and all of a
(43:40):
sudden you're walking next to like a three thousand year
old wall that's not even part of a museum. You
just built up around it. Did There'd be like a
fountain on a corner, like somebody's peeing in that's a
thousand years old. It's it's a very neat city in
that regard. Um, I like, uh where else? Um, that's
(44:05):
all I can come up with right now. Oh you
know what, I don't have to go all fancy pants
like Charleston, South Carolina one of my favorite, but it's
a great place for food. Savannah, Yeah, I like Charlestoniana. Yeah. Yeah,
they're similar to me. Yeah, Charleston is a little more
refined but also a little more modern. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
(44:26):
I don't. It's not fancy pants to like cities overseas, No,
I know. But when it's once his Paris, you're like, yeah,
but Paris is awesome. It is. It's a great time
in London. When's the last time you're in London, like
twenty years ago? Okay, you should go back because London
is like a brand new city. There's something to do
at all times. Now they have cabs, which is apparently
(44:49):
like the big thing that changed there. Um, and it's
just an awesome little town, beautiful. Well maybe we can
go there on a tour. Yes. Uh, well that's your
turn with a question. Uh, this is from Gus M. Parker.
Why did Josh grow his hair? Gus, there's a simple
answer that that's a good question because I can't because
(45:09):
I realized that I have hair, and I'm going to
live it up while I got it. I'm gonna go
with Gary Rickleman, what is the best flavor of pop tart? Hint?
There was only one correct answer. That's not true, Gary.
I think what the answer you're looking for is brown
sugar and cinnamon. It's a good one. There's nothing wrong
(45:32):
with blueberry or strawberry. Strawberries really good as frosted straws
as long as its frosted. That's the key. Well, here's
another key, And here's a tip for you that don't
mind clogging your arteries. Pop it out of the toaster.
I know you don't want to get a stick of
butter and rub it on the back the dry side
and then around the edges of the other side and
(45:52):
just thank me later. I have not tried that. And
I actually heard that before from Jessica Simpson when she
was pregnant. Oh really, apparently is went berserk on the
buttered pop tarts. I've never heard of that. You've got
time for one more? Yeah, we got time for a
couple of mornings. This uh an unusual one from Michael
Snively or Snoopiley, one of the two, probably Snively. If
(46:13):
the Bryant and Clark were units of measure, what would
they measure? Oh? Man, mine would probably Oh I know
what mine would be is some uh sweat level, like
units of sweat per square inch or something. That's a
good one. Mine would measure the distance between any one
(46:34):
place and awesome, Oh wow, whoa how is that? That's good,
thank you, all right. I got one more, Chelsea Hamilton.
What's the most rewarding thing that Stuff you Should Know
has brought to you or allowed you to do. We've
done a lot of really neat things that were very
thankful for. But I'm gonna just say the live shows
because they're so much fun, fun, and it's fun to
(46:55):
go to cities I've never been to, and it's fun
to meet people and get out of this little room. Uh,
very rewarding and very fun. I'm going with Chuck's answers. Welcome,
all right. Uh, well, thanks everybody for those Facebook questions. UM,
if you ever want to get in touch with us
on Facebook, you can go to Facebook dot com slash
Stuff you Should Know. You can also tweet to us
(47:15):
at s y s K podcast let's our handle. You
can send us a good old fashioned email to stuff
Podcast at house touff works dot com, and as always,
join us at our home on the web. Stuff you
Should Know dot com For more on this and thousands
of other topics, is a house Stuff Works dot com
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from the house stuff
Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Josh Clark. There's Child's w Chuck Bryant, and No little
Bit even is stuff you should Know. Man, that coffee
smells good? You want something? Have a sip? No, I'm fine,
(00:23):
but it's just I just love that smells so nice,
even though I don't drink much coffee. Oh yeah, I'm
with you. You know, it's just a delicious smell. Sometimes
I'll go to a department store and just walk through
the fragrant aisle and just smell the coffee samples they have. Well,
I thought you were gonna say you got through the
lingerie and just brush up against things after the coffee.
(00:44):
So after the coffee sniffing is done and I can't
smell anything anymore, right, How are you? Thanks for outing me? Man?
It's creepy. Yeah, you know, I'm sure there's weirdos out
there who do that. Are you kidding me? There's probably
websites dedicated to it. Yeah, I'm fine. Good. Good? Do
(01:07):
you like wine? I love wine? How do you know,
Chuck that the wine you're drinking, it's actually the wine
you're thinking is because nobody bothers to fraudently rip off
bottle of one. Not true. Yeah, there's a famous issue
in the world of wine fraud. Watch people okay um
(01:31):
from Tesco, which is I think it's just a straight
up like supermarket Kim in Britain, I saw that. Actually, yeah,
you're right, And there was a louis Ja dough which
normally goes for about fifteen pounds. It was selling on
sale for five pounds. That's a good deal. But one
of the guys who purchased it contacted some people who
are into wine and said, I think this is phony
because the label looks like it's a photo copy. So
(01:54):
somebody was doing knock off louis Ja dough which normally
goes for not that much, and old at t Tesco,
who was in turn selling it. And this is a
huge thing. Man. There's a big, big debate even still
and just how widespread wine fraud is. And it's really
difficult to get to the bottom of because there's so
many people who have their fingers in this fraudulent pot,
(02:17):
whether wittingly or unwittingly, in either way, are unwilling to
admit that it's as extensive as it is, or the
people who are burned are making a bigger deal out
of it than they are than it really is, because
they have the money in the context to get CBS
to do a story on how they got burned by
buying some fake wine. So it's not entirely clear how
(02:40):
widespread it is. But there have been some really great,
very famous but almost proven stories of outright wine fraud.
But it's a pretty new phenomenon. Uh. Well, if you
think ancient Roman is pretty new, let's hear it man.
Well that's I mean there ever since there was wine,
(03:01):
people were making fake wine or trumping it up as
something other than it was. So the newer practice, like
you can divide it into two things. There was an
ancient room they were doing stuff like this and adding
like lead to wine to sweeten it while they were
killing people. Uh. But then there's the new practice of like, hey,
(03:22):
this is a Thomas Jefferson bottle of wine and you
con bided a Christie's auction for a hundred thousand dollars
and it's really not that at all. Do you remember
back in the eighties, Um, I think reu Needy was
adding like when you wipe a fluid or something. Yeah,
it was at the very least an urban legend. More recently,
there was something added to wine to make it sweeter
(03:43):
that was really bad for you. But I don't know,
I can't confirm if it was that case or not.
This was specifically reu Needy in the eighties. And it again,
it could have just been an urban legend because at
the same time that there were spiders eggs in bubble yum.
You know, yeah, there was a lot of like a
consumer uh panic. I think yeah, it was a golden
age for urban legends. Yeah, agreed. Uh. And you know what,
(04:06):
we need to do one on wine period. Yes, this
is so us. Yeah, we'll do episodes on everything but
the actual thing, and then we'll finally get to the thing. Uh.
And we could also probably do a completely separate podcast
on wine tasting, because man, that's a really bitter pill,
(04:26):
because there are some people who say there really is
no difference in these wines, and there have been numerous
occasions over the years where jerks have set up wine
tasters to fail by just switching out wines and saying
this is a really nice bot or what's really crappy,
and they say whoa, this is lovely. The tannons are
(04:47):
really coming in. It's jammie and full, and they're like,
you're drinking too buck chuck um stuff that. It's a
big bone of contention with wine drinkers and also people
who like to poop poo that and say it's all
subjective and you're all just snooty and either really is
no difference, but there really is a difference. Well, okay,
so there is a like you say, there's there's a
(05:08):
big debate over that, right, um, But if you if
you dive into the world of high end vintage wine collecting,
it is very um. It's like an aura borus, right,
that snake that eats its own tail, in that the
people who are in charge of judging whether something's real
(05:31):
or not are basing that on their previous experiences, which
may or may not have been an experience with a
fraudulent wine. So even if you can tell the difference,
if you've only been exposed to, say, fraudulent eighteen century wine,
then when you are asked to judge a bottle of
(05:51):
like eighteenth century wine, you're gonna compare it to that,
And if it's ultimately coming from the same counterfeitter. You
will be like, yes, this is the real thing, because
I've had that before and it tastes like that. Well yeah,
and here's the other thing. Is there there is vintage,
uh appropriately aged wine that is tastes great because it
(06:14):
has aged in such a way. And then there are
these super old bottles that apparently it tastes like canned
asparagus is the note that it brings out, And these
don't even taste that good. It's just the fact that
you can own it and show people. You don't even
drink it. In most cases, you don't drink at Jefferson wine.
(06:35):
You have it in your collection. So some say, look
at my collection. Exactly. That's the whole point a lot
of people are. For a lot of people, that's the
whole point. It's just own this bottle. It's like owning
a piece of Thomas Jefferson and you get to show
off and and tell people how great you are. Right exactly. So, Um,
that's how a lot of wine counterfeiting has gotten away
with because the people are never going to open the wine.
(06:57):
So whatever tampering you did with the the seal is
never going to be discovered. Um, they're never gonna taste
the wine inside, so it could be two buck chalk
or whatever. Won't see the cork. Yeah. Um, and they're
just they're just happy to have this thing and their
status to be elevated to the point where they don't
really want to know if it's a counterfeit, so long
(07:20):
as they can walk around and tell people. This is
Thomas Jefferson. Right, Well, we should go ahead and start
talking about Bill Coke. He is uh, one of the
other brothers. He is not Charles or David Coke of
the famous uh Republican Coke brothers, fame billionaire supporters of
(07:40):
the Republican Party. Yeah. Yeah, sure, she's saying that's like
the nicest way to describe them. Yeah, it is. Uh.
He is the brother, one of the brothers who got
out along with another brother. Um, but not another brother
from another mother. No, they are the same mother, right right, Okay, Yeah,
he got out of the family business and said, you
(08:02):
know what, um, a billionaire, I'm gonna what I'm gonna
do is I'm gonna start collecting really rare and expensive things. Um.
One thing he has is a gun collection. He owns
Custer's rifle, Billy the Kid's pistol. Does he he owns
the gun that killed Jesse James. Oh, I'm sorry, is
Jesse James Pistol? And that gun and that what was
(08:22):
his name? Robert Ford? Yeah? And that was a good movie.
Boy was it really good? Beautifully shot as well Wide
Rupe's rifle, Doc Holiday's rifle. He has a lot of
vintage guns. He has a lot of very famous works
of art like original Picassos and monaise As exactly. He
(08:44):
sounds like a big sucker to me. And he also
owns uh as this article says several hundred bottles of
what he calls moose piss. Yeah, that's what he calls it.
He said. He Well, he's saying that for all he knows.
That's what's inside. He got duped very famously, many many times. Yeah,
and he has had many many lawsuits over the years
(09:04):
that have come out. This guy loves suing people. He
does what he calls dropping subpoena is on people. Yeah,
he sues people almost recreationally. He drops the subpoena on
their head. Yeah, what a guy. So he um he
Bill Coke again very famously, he's probably the most famous
(09:24):
victim of wine fraud. M because he sues everybody he
possibly can who may or may not have sold them
a fake. Really takes it personally, and he really goes
after people. UM. And he did a lot of media
about this too, so he's very famous for this. UM.
And he brought in some wine experts and said, here
are thirty thousand, forty thousand bottles of wine that I
(09:48):
have in my sellers. How many are fake? And they
just took a random sample of three tho bottles. He
kidding me, No, they said exactly, They're like, we'll bill
you for this. UM. They took a random sample of
three thousand bottles and it yielded a hundred and thirty fakes.
So I mean he has hundreds and hundreds and hundreds
(10:10):
by by extension of fake bottles of wine in his cellar.
And that was actually, that's about on par with what
the average not necessarily uninitiated or uneducated wine buyer, but
fervent vintage wine buyer would have that about four million
(10:34):
dollars seller, about a million of it will be on fakes. Yeah,
and he supposedly spent close to five million dollars on
fake wine over the past quarter century, UM, including some
of those Jefferson's that we'll talk about. Uh and a
lot of this wine came from a man named Rudy
Uh crnia Oh that's good stuff. It's even better than
(10:57):
I had in my head, you crniawan. I like that,
I think. And this guy was one of the most
famous um really alongside another guy that we'll talk about,
one of the most famous wine fraud discs, fraudster, fraudster, counterfeitters,
counterfeitters of all time um And he was sentenced to
(11:17):
ten years in prison and supposedly was to pay close
to fifty million dollars in damages, which is easily what
he made by selling fake wine. In two sales in
two thousand and six, he made thirty six million dollars
selling fake wine. What a jerk. And it's easy to
(11:38):
sit back. And the fence team even used this in
court to say, ah, these are rich guys, like no harm,
no foul, who cares very if you're ripping off the rich.
And I even found myself kind of thinking that. But
at the end of the day, who it's wrong, it's wrong,
it's wrong. Sure, I mean, like I wouldn't do it.
I wouldn't sell a counterfeit bottle of wine. Yeah, it's wrong,
(12:01):
it's illegal, and it's it's gross. And just because you're
ripping off the rich, it's not like he's Robin Hood
and giving that then to the poor. You know he was.
I didn't have the idea that he was doing that.
Plus Um, Dave Rugs, who wrote this, made this point,
but I take issue with it that ultimately vintage counterfeit
(12:22):
wine fraud affects all wine drinkers because that stuff trickles down.
I don't think that's true because from reading this um.
There were two really great long form articles that this
article was partially based on. One was in The New
Yorker and one was on Vanity Fair, and both of
them were totally worth reading. UM. But just from reading
(12:45):
those you get the impression that those are two very
different worlds. That the world of like just regular wine
appreciation and vintage wine collection form of ven diagram that
just barely overlaps, and that one really does not affect
the economy the economics of the other. So if there's
(13:07):
a bunch of counterfeit stuff going on in the vintage
wine world, it probably wouldn't drive up prices for the
wine that you're buying that's you know, ten years old tops.
So I don't think that that's necessarily true. His point
that we all shoulder the burden that counterfeiters do because
these two worlds are so divorced. But even still, like
(13:27):
if you were a people are losing money and reputations
are being built up and lost. You know, I get that.
All right, Well, let's take a little break and we'll
come back and uh, we'll talk about the two ways
that you can generally go about trying to fake a wine.
(14:02):
All right, we're back, We're drunk on wine. I wish
what's your favorite wine? Uh? My favorite wines are big
bodied California cabernets generally, like not a specific like wine maker.
If that's what you're asking, I'm not gonna like, yeah,
(14:23):
there's no wrong answer. Yeah no, Well that was that
funny because it made me think of fat bottom girls,
that Queen song big bodied California Ca. Yeah, it just
potts in my head and I laughed like a goon. Yeah,
I'm like really full bodied wines, zimpandels and cabernets. Yeah,
I think California is just they're doing it right. You know,
(14:44):
they say petitzeras the Rodney danger field of the wine world.
I've heard that. So if you're gonna go about faking
a wine, um, you uh, there are two things you
can do. You can either fake the wine inside a
real bottle or you can fake the bottle real wine. Yeah,
and it's all real wine. You know, it's different vintage
(15:04):
maybe yeah, but like it could be like a really
nice seven wine that you say it's actually from nineteen
fourteen or even one. I mean, like it could be
within a couple of years. It just depends on on
whether it was a good year or if the if
there's a scarcity of it, that kind of stuff. And
actually Bill Cook makes a pretty good point. His whole
(15:26):
thing is he wants to have I think a hundred
and fifty years of Lafitte or some some house, like
every single vintage that they released of every single variety
over the course of a hundred and fifty years, which
is extremely ambitious. And he said it's easy to get
the really prized ones because those are the ones that
(15:48):
like people saved in all that. He said, it's the
mediocre years that are old that nobody bothered to say
this drank and threw away the bottle or just didn't
keep it. Those are the ones that he has the
most trouble. Fine, or they did skeet shooting. They just
had the servants stowed up in the air and they
shot him with shotguns. That's what they do. Richie Riches, Uh, well,
you make a good point too, because Colonie Allen, although
(16:10):
he dealt in the super high echelon, he would also
take a two bottle of wine and fake it to
be like a thousand dollar bottle. Yeah, he did it
both ways. He would he would take out, he would
take an old bottle, legitimate real bottle, put in his
own mix of wine and cork it again and and
make it look like it had never been open. Or
(16:31):
like you said, he would take just say, a forty
seven Lafitte and mess with the label to make it
look like a forty one Lafitte, which would be worth
ten times that what the forty seven Lafitte would be worth. Right,
And clearly, I also want to point out Lafitte is
obviously the only fancy wine that I'm familiar with, because
that's my go too. So if you guys are out
(16:52):
there and you're getting the impression that I know what
I'm talking about as far as wine goes, you have
been duped. Well, you're not a big wine guy. You're
on sortis such, I like wine. I'm I'm definitely not
a wine guy exactly. Yeah. Uh, and I'm that wine
guy either. I'm I'm at the very I'm wine guy
in the brest sense of the word. I like really
(17:14):
good wines. I like going to wineries. But I'm certainly
no like. I'm not saying I have some amazing palette.
I can't pick out vanilla notes and things like that.
I'm just like, man, this tastes really good for up
bottle of it. And I tend to fall into that
camp where I'm certain that there are people out there,
literal tastemakers who can tell the difference between wine and
(17:37):
I've had wine that I didn't like before, I've had
wine that I do like. Um, But I fall into
the camp where I'm ultimately like, it's it's whatever you appreciate.
It's no hierarchy, there doesn't need to be. Um. You know,
a two thousand dollar bottle is not necessarily going to
taste as good as a twenty dollar bottle. That that
(17:58):
you the whole thing is just about individual enjoyment, and
he kind of snobbery associated with it to me just
misses the point. Yeah, here's my deal is, I can
really tell the difference between what I would consider cheap
wine and like a decent bottle or a good bottle.
But that's where my taste level max is out. I
can't tell the difference between a two bottle and at bottle,
(18:23):
But if you gave me like a six dollar bottle,
you can. You can taste the difference. It's between that
and like bottle. Yeah, but even then, if that's what
you like, that's what you like. I'm not poo, It's
just not what I want, you know. Oh man, a
lot of caveats there. So um, we were talking about
Rudy kay yeah, and how to how to he faked
(18:45):
wines and he was He got real bottles correct in general,
and made his own wine concoctions. Here's what this dude
did right to get to the point where he could
even counterfeit. Yes, he got his hands on real stuff
and he ran up some serious, serious bar tabs while
he was doing it. There's a very um legendary story
(19:07):
of him hooking up with this guy who was the
head of wine sales at a um a an auction
house called Acker Meryll. They factor in big time into
this guy's ascent and Rudy Kay's counterfeit ascent, not weddingly necessarily,
(19:27):
but they they let him use their reputation to build
his own. But he did it by duping them by
throwing like these crazy parties at like um at um
restaurants and having like two fifty thousand dollar tabs, picking
up the tab himself. But then after everybody left, going
(19:47):
to the staff at the restaurant being like, mail me
every single one of those bottles, and they go, well, okay,
it's your wine, but that's weird. Not enough to make
mention of it, but it was odd to them. His
big thing was that he did it at the same
place over and over again, so they did start to notice.
But while he was doing this, he was also collecting wine,
(20:08):
to really expensive vintage wine, and there was already a
market for it, but it didn't look anything like the
market that he built almost himself. He drove the value
of vintage wine up almost singlehandedly by buying up as
many bottles of old stuff as he could um And
while he was doing that, he was building his reputation.
(20:29):
He was making connections and he was getting his hands
on legitimate wine that he could use to resell now
that the market was up at a higher price after
he had already consumed it. It say like a party. Yeah.
And one thing he was doing that tipped off some
people early on was um. Like you were saying, he
was buying off years of good vintages, great vintages, to
(20:53):
where there was one guy who thinks Jeffrey Troy was
his name. He was a wine merchant and he said
he was buying these good bottles for French Burgundy, but
they weren't great, they were off years, and it was
just if he was a collector, it was just weird
to buy these, uh, and to be adamant about buying
these because he could get him for cheaper and fake
them easier exactly, like he could just kind of smudge
(21:14):
the year and all of a sudden it's a much
more expensive vintage. Um. So he's he's driving the market up.
He's buying legitimate wine. Apparently he's taking out loans that
he defaulted on to to build this reputation of his UM.
And so when the market hits he starts counterfeiting, And
there was one story that actually was pretty prominent in
(21:37):
the Vanity Fair article where he was apparently confused. He thought,
and there's no way that any of us would have
ever thought this, but he thought that a Ponceau close St.
Denis was the same thing as the Christine Ponceau close St. Denis. Right,
(21:57):
he was way off. So it turns out that he
figured that ponce Uh made this wine in Burgundy in
the forties because Christine ponce so close end and he's
made this wine in the forties. Turns out that the
regular Ponceo, the very famous Ponceau family made their close
end any starting in the eighties, so that he actually
(22:21):
got found out because of this one mistake. This led
to his unraveling, and he was going to auction or
sell about like nine bottles of this stuff that was
overtly counterfeit. It had never existed, which also said a
lot about the collectors at the time too, because they
were covening and paying for wine that they never even
heard of it strictly because these these people were attached
(22:45):
to it. It's pretty amazing, it really is. And that's
how he was able to get away with it. For
so long because that dinner, the guy Ponceau himself, um,
the guy who was the proprietor of the vineyard, showed
up at that dinner, flew from Paris to I think
New York to be at the dinner to make sure
that they didn't auction off those things because he knew
they were counterfeit. And Rudy Kay still was left to
(23:07):
just keep going for years after that because because of reputations. Well,
and like you said, he had built up this reputation,
which is a big part of it. Um, you have
to be a true con artist. You can't just go
in there, uh and say, I've got all these Jefferson wines.
I'm chuck. You know, you have to be known in
the community, and it takes a long time, and they
(23:28):
have to think that right, Yeah, I have to think
you have money, real money. What he did, No, he
borrowed it all. Well, I thought he came for money.
That was well, he had money at one point. He
borrowed oh no, but then he made a lot, right,
So think about this. I think he defaulted on a
three or four million dollar loan and then another one
(23:49):
or two million dollar loan, and then he also borrowed
privately from other like wine collectors that he knew. But
even still, let's say he borrowed ten million dollars that
he defaulted, he may tens intens intens more millions thirty
four million dollars in one year just from two sales. Yeah,
and he currently is appealing his conviction UM on the
(24:12):
grounds that uh that when when he was arrested, he
was arrested on his front porch. Then they searched his
house and they said you can't do that. That That they
got the the search warrant afterward, and he said, well
you can't do that. There should I should have never
been searched. And it's looking like they're saying, now you
know what they had reasonable uh doubt. Uh said yeah exactly.
(24:35):
So I don't think the appeal is going to go anywhere.
But this is as recently as like this year. I
think he's still appealing. But he got ten years, right, yeah,
ten years man, Um, So he got caught and he
got caught red hand, red handed. It sounds like UM
and the people who were attached to him that helped
built up this market definitely suffered uh some dings to
(24:59):
their reputation. But are saying like, we had no idea,
we trusted this guy, we were duped too, and UM
to their to their merit acker, meryll Um offered like, uh,
money back guarantees on anything that was considered found to
be fake and and paid up on it after one auction. Well,
(25:19):
one of the guys Coke is suing is uh. I
can't remember his name, but he supposed supposedly. He's like,
I didn't know I was selling you fake wine, like
I got duped, and he's saying, no, you knew. So
they were trying to prove whether or not this guy
actually knew. And so that's that's another part of that
debate where how widespread is this, who knows what um?
(25:40):
And who's like how far do you go back before
you find the person who did it? Right, So we'll
talk about one other person who allegedly did it right
after this break. So, Chuck, there's another man, very famous
(26:10):
man in the wine world. His name is Hardy Hardy
roden Stock, but I don't believe that's his real name.
His real name is what mine heart, that's right, what
a name, that's his given name, But he goes by
Hardy roden Stock and has since the seventies and he
(26:33):
to be a truly great wine counterfeitter, not only do
you have to build up a reputation as rich and
um willing to crack bottles of ridiculously expensive, um historically
valuable wine at parties where there's wine critics and auctioneers
(26:56):
and wine experts, um. But you also have to have
a certain love for wine. I think Rudy kay definitely
loved wine. Yes, they but they all have. But yeah,
and Hardy Rodenbach definitely does too. And apparently there's there's
a big question about whether he is one of the
better wine mixers on the planet. Yeah, because that's that's
(27:19):
a real job, where like like someone will work at
a winery and they'll take a little bit of this
and a little bit of that, and then all of
a sudden you've got there. Yeah, they're they're they're blend.
Some blends are better than others. Apparently Rodenstock is a
master blender if he is in fact a counterfeiter. This
article on how stuff works make it makes it sound
like Bill Coke's hired FBI gun closed the book and
(27:41):
like it's done. But it's never been proven in a
court of law. That Rodenstock actually um was this counterfeiter
and he still denies the allegations. Well, the circumstantial evidence
is pretty pretty substantial. Yeah, I mean I think the
only reason is because he refuses to come to America
to go to court, you know. But there's no criminal
(28:03):
Prosecution's all civil as far as I understand. Yeah, I
think that's the case. So he was a former music
manager and um, he I think they're making him. There's
a book called The Billionaires Vinegar about this about the
Jefferson wines that they're making into a movie with McConaughey.
Of course, does he play Bill Coke or Hardy roden Stock.
(28:25):
I don't know who he's playing, or does he just
kind of like wander around days in the background he's
the wine maker man. Uh yeah, I'm not sure who
he's playing actually, But it was a big book and
it was about the famous Jefferson wines and basically the
deal is Thomas Jefferson, as we all know, was way
into wine, way into France. UM, a big francophile and
(28:50):
he had either bottles in his collection or he had
his own vintage as well. Um, Thomas Jefferson wines and
very famously, Hardens stock was rooted out allegedly. I guess
do we have to say that as faking these Jefferson bottles. Yeah? Um,
he would force you know, you're supposed to spit out
when you're drinking wine tasting. He would. He would I
(29:13):
don't know about force, but highly encourage his guests to swallow,
so they would be drunker by the time they got
to the real good stuff at the end, which is
and again, so it's unusual to force your guests to
drink rather than spit out the wine at a tasting party.
And then it's also unusual to bring out your best
stuff at the end because everybody knows your palette is
(29:33):
saturated and you can't really tell the difference anyway. Well,
if you've ever been on a wine tour and go
to like several wineries, you definitely at the last winery
you're like, give me a case. Is great. Yeah. So
when he's throwing these parties in these tastings, again, he's invited,
and they're very smart to invite wine experts, wine critics,
(29:55):
wine journalists. It's an event. It is an event. And
again all these people think that this dude, it is
just this eccentric, extraordinarily rich dude who is literally opening
to drink and share with them. He's wonderful, these these
people who are peons compared to this man. He's such
a great man because he's opened a seventeen eighties seven
(30:15):
bottle of Thomas Jefferson's wine and he's given me a glass.
I've got to go right about it. I got to
talk about how great Hardy roden Stock is. So it's
very smart to have surrounded himself with the people he did. Yeah.
So his story was that he said, um, he claimed
that he found a batch of Jefferson bottles behind a
brick wall in a Paris Parisian basement that he still
(30:37):
hasn't revealed where this is a little suspicious. Uh. And
then if you already got all the wine out of there, yeah, exactly. Uh.
And then he and uh, he went and sold a
lot of these two people like Coke and Christopher Forbes
and other billionaires for um, hundreds of thousands of dollars
per bottle. And I think they were like about a
hundred and twenty bottle. Yeah, it's a ton of money.
(31:00):
And um, they were fakes and it was all it
all came down to a little matter of punctuation, which
is hysterical to me that Thomas Jefferson bottles. Um. Well,
first of all, he kept really meticulous records because he
was so into wine. Jefferson. Yeah, so on the bottles,
chuck it said, and it was engraved t H period
(31:24):
capital J period. Right. Supposedly, Jefferson, when he wrote his initials,
it would be t H colon capital J period. So
that fatal flaw of the matter of punctuation is what
gave him away. Basically, Yeah, well there's a larger question too.
So the idea that Thomas Jefferson would have his bottles
(31:45):
engraved was based on a letter, a verified letter. Um.
It was an order that Jefferson placed for French wine
on behalf of himself and George Washington, Which makes these
bottles even more amazingly awesome because they think, well, these
came from an order that Jefferson placed, that we're also
in George Washington's shipment as well, and that they they
(32:09):
they needed to be separated out by initials. But if
you step back and you think they wouldn't go in
and grave all the bottles, they just marked the crates
that the bottles came in. This create goes to George,
this crate goes to Jefferson because he was ordering it
by the case, not by the bottle. So the idea
that the bottles would be engraved is also dubious in
(32:29):
and of itself. But Monticello historians are like, number one,
he this is wrong the way that this is engraved,
that's not how he would have done it. And secondly,
there's no records in all of we have the records
for this era, and there's nothing in there about these
vintages being in Monicello or being ordered by Jefferson. And
(32:51):
then also, um, once Bill Coke put his FBI dude
on the on the case, it turns out that it's
likely that this this engraving was done by modern instruments. Yeah,
he hired a guy named an ex fed named Jim
McElroy or I'm sorry, Jim Elroy and Royal, I guess,
because so he hired this guy, paid him a lot
(33:13):
of money, I imagine, to try and do some digging
on this. And one of their first lines of defense
was there's something called uh cesium dash one seven, and
that is UH a radioactive isotope that exists because it's
a product of nuclear fission of uranium. So it didn't
(33:33):
exist until we started doing that, before we started launching
nuclear bomb explosion tests. Yeah, exactly. Uh, now it exists,
and you can actually test for this stuff, so if
you find you know it basically can date something back
to However, in the case of harden Stock, he was
smart enough at least to use wine older than so
(33:56):
that didn't really help him much. Yeah, and I wonder
if he just surely he is lucked out because I
wonder if that Caeson test was around when he did this,
because this he supposedly found him in eighty five and
started selling him immediately. Yeah, who knows, maybe got lucky
or maybe he just was like, I need to use
some really old, nice wine, yeah, to at least try
and get away with it. So again there's like and
(34:17):
then there. One other part of the case against him
was that he had a tenant once at his family's
house who had an apartment near his. In the house
and in the basement, the tenant said that he saw
like basically tons of empty bottles and um stacks of
labels and all this stuff, which to the tenant meant, well,
(34:39):
this guy's forging wine. Right, that's a little more. That's
probably what I would think. I hope he doesn't go
by my recycling every Wednesday here wine counterfeitter, it could be. Uh,
So there are a lot of there's nothing you can
do about these these old um, I mean, you can
have people inspect them and try and verify them, but
(35:02):
there's really nothing you can do as a like a
full proof method. But really nice wineries now arguing there
are a lot of methods you can do now for
future generations of wine fraud. Yeah, for the vintage stuff
you're s o l Basically, you just have to really
trust where it's coming from. Probably hire an expert and
um maybe stay away from rodent stock if you're Bill Coke. Right,
(35:25):
that's right. But there Yeah, like you said, the modern
guys are using things like um R f I D tags,
um QR codes that you scan and it takes you
to a website or something. Microchips like you have in
your dog. Yeah, so you can track the actual bottle.
There's also like tamper proof um capsules, the that the
(35:45):
wine is encased in the bottle's neck that when that's
open it changes color. If it's ever been opened and
some actually alert the internet or I guess back home
at head Court the Internet once it's been open. And
there's another one that's pretty cool. There's this company that
(36:06):
inserts a specific DNA marker into like the ink on
the label that can't be counterfeit, and that they can
go back and later and be like, no, this is real.
At the very least, we know the labels real. And
rudy case case, he had a bunch of credit card
charges for glue and labels and ink, and he, I
(36:27):
mean he had a pretty nice trail of evidence behind him. Yeah,
I was not very smart with it. Well, I mean,
if his apartment was just a counterfeiting factor. And then
lastly checked the one of the pieces of evidence that
a lot of people point to when they say that
um wine fraud is a big deal um is eBay. Yeah.
(36:47):
You can go on eBay and spend a hundred bucks
on a empty bottle that, if it weren't empty, would
go for a thousand or ten thousand or whatever. And
the idea behind it, of course, is that somebody's alling
it up and putting it back on the market as
a counterfeit. Why would someone sell that that reason to
(37:08):
make a hundred bucks on a ten dollar bottle of wine.
Some people love money. I don't know. It just seems
like a lot of just people who buy that kind
of wine. I don't picture them going on eBay and
running auctions over It makes you wonder also if like
those are people who they're like, they're just working at
a restaurant and well, that's what it sounds like to me,
(37:29):
and take that home and put it on anybay. The
servant throws the uh you know, cleans up after the
dinner party. Yeah, that's what I figure what's going on?
And apparently a lot of restaurants now because of guys
like Rudy Kay and uh Hardy Roads Road and stock
now um smash vintage bottles once the wine has been
ordered and drunk with. Well with the shotgun in the
(37:51):
skeet shooting, I got one last thing. Supposedly there were
only five Magnums Fleur produced. Uh. Between two thousand five
and two thousand seven, eighteen magnums of seven La Fleur
were sold at auction. That's so easy to How can
(38:13):
that happen? That's so easy to check when there's only
five of something. The argument is that either the guy
who works at La Fleur and did in seven and says, no,
there was only five magnums doesn't remember because the record
keeping in like Burgundy is terrible back in the day.
Um or that the there's just no will. There's so
(38:35):
much of a market for counterfeit wine, and there's not
enough pressure being put on the people who are actually
selling it or allowing it to happen, that it's just whatever.
And supposedly now that America has gotten more and more savvy,
this counterfeit market is moving over to China, so where
there's like a lot of wealth coming up and not
a lot of wine education, and people are just getting
(38:57):
taken for rides. Man, good stuff. Yeah, this is a
good one man, good pick. If you want to know
more about wine fraud, you can type those words in
the search bar how stu works dot com? And I
said the search bar, Chuck, what is it? Time for
Facebook questions? All right? Sometimes we pool questions from Facebook
(39:21):
to answer them. That's what we're doing now. This is
from Diane Martin. Diane F. Martin, uh cent, your podcasts
are essentially what would be called literature reviews and research lingo.
How do you decide which references to include an exclude.
Use any kind of quality indicators to decide what you
will and will include, especially when they're deeply debated. This
(39:41):
is a good question. Um, we've talked about our research process.
I think we tried to use peer review journals and
what I mean, if we find something on the internet,
we try and double and triple check that information. I know,
a big giveaway. You always talk about as if it's
the same exa thing printed a bunch. That's usually a
sign that it could be bogus, like Rodney danger Field
(40:04):
being in the Scout in the movie The Scout, but
it still bears mentioning. You just have to mention it
with the caveat you don't find it credible, but it's
out there because it doesn't. It exists in some form
of fashion. Uh, scientific journals, medical journals, I mean, pure
of you. It's just a great way to go if
(40:24):
you can get your hands on it. I remember this
great article called like why is Science behind a Paywall?
About the basically the cart the science publishing cartel. But
if you can't get your hands on on perio of stuff,
that's the best stuff to work with. Agreed, go ahead.
Another question. Yeah, Chuck for me, this is from Shane Elliott.
(40:49):
I knew I think you meant no. This question will
find a special place in Chuck's heart. What are your
favorite types and kinds of beers? And why do you
brew your own beer? And so body he else said
recently on Twitter that you said in the beer episode
that you're gonna get into homebrewing. Did you ever? So
that's a two part question for you, Chuck from Twitter
and Facebook. Well, you're a beer guy too. I like,
(41:11):
I do not brew my beer, but on the record,
is really liking I p a s. I know there's
a backlash going on now because there's so many of
them and people are like, there's other kinds of beers
in the world. I PAS tastes like soap I love.
I love anything that's super hoppy. Yeah, I do. I
just that's what I like. Our friend Dave dropped by
(41:31):
yeah Sweetwater, sweetwater and brought us some hot hash. I
haven't tried it yet, have you, no, but his all
that stuff is good. Sweetwater does a great job. And
we've always both kind of agreed that, uh, Sierra Nevada
Palele is one of the great all time, but there's
so many great ones. Bells too hearted, I love oh man,
(41:52):
that might be the best ever. Yeah, and that plenty
of the elder we got sent some of that. That
was delicious. Um Oh here in Athens, Georgia, Creature comforts tropically,
I've not had that one delicious um orfe Is Brewing
is here in Atlanta, and they make a sour that
I tried that was really really good. I'm not into
(42:13):
the sours. Have you tried it sours? Yeah? Yeah, I
loved it. I don't get it weird that I was like,
this is kind of good. Yeah. It was weird in
a good way, because sometimes weird can just be novel
and you're like, Okay, I tried that, it's done. This
is I mean, I like it. Yeah. I don't like
wheat beers, Belgian whites. Not a fan. All right, there's
(42:38):
your answer, fish Bowl. Now I'm thirsty, Jackson Blig. Other
than Atlanta, what are your top five favorite cities each? Geez,
New York, San Francisco, Seattle? Do they have to be
American cities? Serious? Uh? In that case, then I'll throw
(42:59):
in Paris and uh London, look at me, Well, fancy,
I know. Uh let's see. I love Hiroshima, Japan is
a really neat city, so it's Kyoto. I'm gonna make
those tied for one though. Of course. New York, Um,
(43:20):
let's see you where I like d see a lot too. Yeah,
that's a great town. Um, Rome, Italy is surprisingly neat. Surprisingly,
what are you getting? I mean it's a major cities, yeah,
and it's packed with people, so you would think like
it's a city, but it also has I mean like
you're just walking along the street and all of a
(43:40):
sudden you're walking next to like a three thousand year
old wall that's not even part of a museum. You
just built up around it. Did There'd be like a
fountain on a corner, like somebody's peeing in that's a
thousand years old. It's it's a very neat city in
that regard. Um, I like, uh where else? Um, that's
(44:05):
all I can come up with right now. Oh you
know what, I don't have to go all fancy pants
like Charleston, South Carolina one of my favorite, but it's
a great place for food. Savannah, Yeah, I like Charlestoniana. Yeah. Yeah,
they're similar to me. Yeah, Charleston is a little more
refined but also a little more modern. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
(44:26):
I don't. It's not fancy pants to like cities overseas, No,
I know. But when it's once his Paris, you're like, yeah,
but Paris is awesome. It is. It's a great time
in London. When's the last time you're in London, like
twenty years ago? Okay, you should go back because London
is like a brand new city. There's something to do
at all times. Now they have cabs, which is apparently
(44:49):
like the big thing that changed there. Um, and it's
just an awesome little town, beautiful. Well maybe we can
go there on a tour. Yes. Uh, well that's your
turn with a question. Uh, this is from Gus M. Parker.
Why did Josh grow his hair? Gus, there's a simple
answer that that's a good question because I can't because
(45:09):
I realized that I have hair, and I'm going to
live it up while I got it. I'm gonna go
with Gary Rickleman, what is the best flavor of pop tart? Hint?
There was only one correct answer. That's not true, Gary.
I think what the answer you're looking for is brown
sugar and cinnamon. It's a good one. There's nothing wrong
(45:32):
with blueberry or strawberry. Strawberries really good as frosted straws
as long as its frosted. That's the key. Well, here's
another key, And here's a tip for you that don't
mind clogging your arteries. Pop it out of the toaster.
I know you don't want to get a stick of
butter and rub it on the back the dry side
and then around the edges of the other side and
(45:52):
just thank me later. I have not tried that. And
I actually heard that before from Jessica Simpson when she
was pregnant. Oh really, apparently is went berserk on the
buttered pop tarts. I've never heard of that. You've got
time for one more? Yeah, we got time for a
couple of mornings. This uh an unusual one from Michael
Snively or Snoopiley, one of the two, probably Snively. If
(46:13):
the Bryant and Clark were units of measure, what would
they measure? Oh? Man, mine would probably Oh I know
what mine would be is some uh sweat level, like
units of sweat per square inch or something. That's a
good one. Mine would measure the distance between any one
(46:34):
place and awesome, Oh wow, whoa how is that? That's good,
thank you, all right. I got one more, Chelsea Hamilton.
What's the most rewarding thing that Stuff you Should Know
has brought to you or allowed you to do. We've
done a lot of really neat things that were very
thankful for. But I'm gonna just say the live shows
because they're so much fun, fun, and it's fun to
(46:55):
go to cities I've never been to, and it's fun
to meet people and get out of this little room. Uh,
very rewarding and very fun. I'm going with Chuck's answers. Welcome,
all right. Uh, well, thanks everybody for those Facebook questions. UM,
if you ever want to get in touch with us
on Facebook, you can go to Facebook dot com slash
Stuff you Should Know. You can also tweet to us
(47:15):
at s y s K podcast let's our handle. You
can send us a good old fashioned email to stuff
Podcast at house touff works dot com, and as always,
join us at our home on the web. Stuff you
Should Know dot com For more on this and thousands
of other topics, is a house Stuff Works dot com
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Josh Clark
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