Rudy Kurniawan's wine forgeries
United States, 2004 to 2014
This case is a work of fiction. The characters, names, places and events in the game do not portray real people. The account below is a factual summary, based on public sources, of the case that served as inspiration.
Rudy Kurniawan became a well-known figure in the American rare wine market by selling and auctioning bottles from legendary Burgundy and Bordeaux vintages. In 2008, producer Laurent Ponsot noticed that lots of Clos Saint-Denis offered at auction bore vintages the domaine had never made, and he began to investigate.
In 2012 the FBI found a forgery workshop in Kurniawan's home: printed labels, corks, capsules and empty bottles of expensive wines, which he refilled with blends of cheaper ones. He was convicted in 2013 and served a ten-year sentence. Poisoning with aconite, a toxic plant, is a method seen in real cases, such as a 2010 London trial in which a meal had been laced with the root.
Sources
In the game
Bitter Star
Maison Garnier, Lyon, 10:40 pm. On the restaurant's gala night, the critic Bernard Roux collapsed at table 7 between the cheese and the dessert.
The game borrows the scam of selling ordinary wine under a rare vintage's label and the idea of an expert who exposes the fraud. Characters, setting and outcome are fiction.
