Sour Grapes

Above a cer­tain price point, they say, you’re not pay­ing for the wine, you’re pay­ing for the label. When that tag reach­es thou­sands per bot­tle how­ev­er, you can argue that rare wines offer a mag­i­cal con­nec­tion with ter­roir and his­to­ry, but it’s still hard to dis­pel the sus­pi­cion it’s all an exer­cise in vinous bling for the super-rich – many of whom are unaware they’re shelling out big bucks for elab­o­rate fakes.

More fool them, you might think, but this inves­tiga­tive doc probes a lit­tle deep­er and deliv­ers up a fas­ci­nat­ing real-life cen­tral char­ac­ter with the two-faced bon­homie and cun­ning of Patri­cia Highsmith’s Tom Rip­ley. When dot­com-boom liq­uid­i­ty sloshed over the wine auc­tion scene, no one splashed more cash than Rudy Kur­ni­awan, who was tight-lipped about his back­ground, but whose knowl­edge, gen­eros­i­ty and edu­cat­ed palate ingra­ti­at­ed him with the coterie of vin­tage-col­lect­ing high-rollers. It looked like he was stok­ing up the mar­ket to sell on at even high­er prices – but his plan was even more fiendish than that…

Indeed, from a not-that-promis­ing set-up, the movie becomes an engross­ing pro­ce­dur­al, trig­gered when a top Bur­gundy wine­mak­er spots that Kur­ni­awan is sell­ing off his wines from vin­tages when they weren’t actu­al­ly pro­duced. Soon he’s on the case, as the FBI start cir­cling, and the truth of Kurniawan’s meth­ods and iden­ti­ty are uncov­ered – one inves­ti­ga­tor sug­gest­ing his elab­o­rate bluff makes him ​“a Gen X Great Gats­by”. Offer­ing a slick­ly-shot peek into seri­ous­ly deluxe lifestyles, the film­mak­ers extract some wry humour from the unfold­ing chaos, with sundry Hol­ly­wood types valiant­ly refus­ing to believe they’ve been duped.

In the end, the fin­ger is jus­ti­fi­ably point­ed at unscrupu­lous auc­tion­eers, and while Kur­ni­awan ulti­mate­ly remains an enig­mat­ic fig­ure, his sto­ry reminds us that only the mas­ter forg­ers tru­ly under­stand the great­ness of any art form.