Vintage Stuff

To be invited to one of Jay’s parties was something to boast about. They were lavish and exclusive. It was a sign one had made it to the top. Right next to you might be an A-list celeb, a government minister or a Footsie-100 chief exec.

Back then, Jay was relatively young, relatively handsome and apparently extremely wealthy. He seemed to have sprung out of nowhere. In no time at all he was a leading figure on the scene, written and gossiped about everywhere, mentioned in connection with partners of both sexes. Despite this he managed to remain rarely, if ever, photographed. Slim and slight, one had to meet him in person to see his swept-back long hair, hear his weird light-tinkle laugh and catch the faint, undefinable foreign accent. Was he Jay, or perhaps Jai: who knows?  When did he first start throwing those parties? How did he become so very, very rich? He was, and remains to this day, an enigma.

For many, the important thing was that he seemed to have pockets of infinite depth. Some said he came from a wealthy family and was living off huge handouts.  Who really cared as long as the parties – and the wine – kept flowing?

It was through his extraordinary access to the very finest wines that I came across him. He stood out thanks to a palate of rare finesse, better than all but a very few at identifying the characteristics of different terroir and vintages. He had developed a taste for the very best Burgundy, and because of the absurdly complex system of appellations he often contacted me where I work [SH1] at the auction house.

Jay quickly became a major player in the market, buying and selling some of the greatest wines. At one auction he bought so much Domaine de la Romanée-Conti that he earned the epithet ‘King Conti’. At another auction, in 2006, he sold almost twelve million pounds worth of wine, beating the previous record by three million.

These were the days of the first dotcom boom, when so many Silicon Valley geeks had more money than sense, a combination which brought them across the pond to the salesrooms and auction houses of Europe. Heady times, and I admit I was seduced by the froth and the glitz, not to mention the commission I was earning.

I think it was roughly four years later when I first got an inkling that all was not what it seemed with King Conti.

His significant offering for our autumn 2010 catalogue included a few cases of Clos St Denis from Domaine Ponsot. Nothing strange there except they were of vintages before 1980. I had never before come across wines of this age from this source and so I contacted Laurent, the new head of that family’s estate, whom I knew slightly. He, too, found the items surprising. He said he was under the impression that his family only started offering this particular wine in the early eighties.

It seemed a delicate situation. I needed to dig further to protect our reputation. But nor could I decline to list the wines of our biggest client. I’m not proud of the answer I came up with. Our auctioneer somehow managed to overlook several particular lots among many others. Luckily, we were able to keep this quiet and, after many profuse apologies from me, the bottles stayed, free of charge of course, in our temperature-controlled cellars awaiting the next auction.

By coincidence, in the intervening period, Frank Coty, another very good client and a big name in wine as well as cosmetics, became suspicious about several bottles in his collection. He had bought a magnum of Pétrus ‘21, but then, somewhere, he had come across a cellar account which suggested the estate bottled no magnums that year. We talked quietly together and he told me he was going to delve deeper. Authentication experts became involved and confirmed that he had one or two possibly dodgy cases in his possession. They examined the Clos St Denis in our cellars, too, and tried to find a paper trail back to the vineyard. They found none. Inconclusive but suspicious.

I started to smell a rat, a rather odorous one, and later, after more odd mismatches, I made our findings known to someone in the Fraud Squad. They started their own inquiries and more than a year later, in March 2012, warrants in hand, they raided one of Jay’s lavish houses, on The Bishops Avenue. He wasn’t there but what was there was a fully equipped counterfeiting workshop, complete with corking tools, labels, empty bottles, extensive tasting notes and even small bags of carefully aged dust.

King Conti had been taking less expensive wines – though all still far better than you will find in your high-street off-licence – and was putting them in far more exclusive bottles. Or just changing the age on the label to make them appear to be of a costlier vintage.

It was a clever trick, because what he was dealing with were among the world’s most expensive wines. He knew full well they are rarely drunk. So it is almost impossible for anyone to be sure how they will taste.  On the rare occasions they are opened, it is often courtesy of a generous host, like Jay himself. And who would cast aspersions on anything from a bottle which costs as much as your car?

And Jay himself? Well, the lavish parties suddenly ended, and little more is known. He is not to be found in London; in fact, not in Europe according to Interpol.

His was not a victimless crime but one can only guess at the true scale of his deception. Most of those he cheated will be keeping their heads down. Who, for example, having in their cellar a rare bottle of Puligny Montrachet for which they have paid five-figures, wants to confront the idea that it is possibly worth less than a hundred quid and may not even be a Puligny at all. Actually, there are those who will warn you that many if not most of the pre-1980 Burgundies are not quite what they claim to be.

Jay was confident and plausible. He had me fooled too. With a dismissive air, he told me at one of his parties when I was surprised by an alleged Aloxe Corton: “If you can’t tell the ’78 from the ’77, stick to bloody beer”.