EP 76: Rudy Kurniawan: Wine Connoisseur? Or Total Fraudster?

This week on Hashtag History, we are discussing Rudy Kurniawan, a world famous wine connoisseur, collector, seller...and total fraudster. In 2012 when the Federal Bureau of Investigations raided Kurniawan’s Arcadia, California home, they found the place littered with empty wine bottles, detached labels, corking tools, wax for sealing bottles, and extensive wine tasting notes. It would appear that Kurniawan was mixing cheaper wines, studying his tasting notes to blend the tastes as seamlessly as possible, and then putting them in bottles with expensive labels and passing them off as rare, vintage wines. Kurniawan would become the first person in the United States to be tried and convicted of wine fraud.

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