The Jordan Harbinger Show - 1076: Wine Fraud | Skeptical Sunday

Episode Date: November 10, 2024

Is a $2,000 bottle of wine really better than a $20 one? Pieter Colpaert decants the truth about pricing, perception, and epic fraud on Skeptical Sunday! Welcome to Skeptical Sunday, a special edition of The Jordan Harbinger Show where Jordan and a guest break down a topic that you may have never thought about, open things up, and debunk common misconceptions. This time around, we’re joined by producer, multimedia journalist, and wine enthusiast Pieter Colpaert! On This Week's Skeptical Sunday, We Discuss: Wine fraud is surprisingly common in the fine wine market — experts estimate that as much as 20% of fine wines could be counterfeit, especially among rare and expensive bottles. The largest case involved Rudy Kurniawan, who sold approximately $550 million worth of counterfeit wines. Wine pricing is influenced by multiple factors beyond quality, including scarcity, vineyard age, production methods, aging time, and marketing. However, studies show that beyond $50-100, you're often paying for reputation and rarity rather than significantly better quality. Scientific studies have shown that even wine experts struggle to consistently identify or rate expensive wines in blind tastings. At one Wine Spectator event, 54 experts couldn't reliably distinguish between wines ranging from $1.65 to $150 per bottle. The psychology of wine pricing has a strong effect on perception — research shows that people's brains actually respond more positively to wine when they believe it's expensive, even if it's the exact same wine. This is called the "price-quality heuristic." The good news is that excellent wines can be found in the $20-30 range. By exploring different regions, grape varieties, and styles without fixating on price, you can discover fantastic wines that suit your personal taste while staying within a reasonable budget. Trust your own preferences over marketing and pricing signals. Connect with Jordan on Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube. If you have something you'd like us to tackle here on Skeptical Sunday, drop Jordan a line at [e-mail] and let him know! Connect with Pieter at his website, Instagram, and Twitter! Full show notes and resources can be found here: jordanharbinger.com/1076 If you love listening to this show as much as we love making it, would you please peruse and reply to our Membership Survey here? See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Welcome to Skeptical Sunday. I'm your host, Jordan Harbinger. Today I'm here with Skeptical Sunday co-host journalist Peter Colpert. On the Jordan Harbinger show, we decode the stories, secrets, and skills of the world's most fascinating people and turn their wisdom into practical advice that you can use to impact your own life and those around you. Our mission is to help you become a better-informed, more critical thinker. And during the week, we have long-form conversations with a variety of amazing folks, from spies to CEOs, athletes, authors, thinkers, performers. On Sundays, we got Skeptical Sunday, where a rotating guest co-host and I break down a topic you may have never thought about

and debunk common misconceptions about that topic, such as, recycling, astrology, acupuncture, expiration dates, sovereign citizens, e-commerce, scams, diet supplements, and more. And if you're new to the show, or you want to tell your friends about the show, and I always appreciate it when you do that, I suggest our episode

starter packs. These are collections of our favorite episodes on persuasion, negotiation, psychology, disinformation, cyber warfare, crime, and cults, and more. That'll help new listeners get a taste of everything we do here on the show, just visit jordanharbinger.com slash start or search for us in your Spotify app to get started. Today we are uncorking a fascinating topic. What makes a good bottle of wine so dang expensive? Can a thousand dollar bottle of wine really be a hundred times better than that $10 bottle of

Josh in the back of your fridge? Would most people even be able to tell the difference? Joining me to explore these questions is our resident wine expert, at least as of last week. Peter Colpart. Peter, welcome to the show, man. Thanks for having me, Jordan. But don't call me a wine expert, I think. I'm just a regular guy who loves a good glass of wine now and then and who started wondering why a lot of the good stuff is so damn expensive. Yeah, that's the big question, right? I've never really understood it myself. And it just seems like there's such a wide range, right? It's not like a camera lens where one is decently priced and the other one's $100 more or some are ridiculous because they're cinematic. This is like even more wild in the pricing than seemingly luxury. goods, which is really confusing for a guy like me. So what got you interested in all this in the first place? Well, I think my origin story is I was drinking this beautiful Sicilian red wine from a natural winemaker in Sicily, who's actually a Belgian guy, just like myself. His name is Frank

Cornelison, and he produces some really incredible wines on the slopes of Mount Etna in Sicily. So I was trying his Susukaru, which is a favorite of rapper Action Bronson. The epitome of taste. Yeah, exactly. He compared to the joy he felt drinking that wine to when his mom bought him the NBA Jam Tournament Edition for PlayStation when he was a little kid. That is quite the endorsement. And I know I'm joking about him being the epitome of taste,

but apparently he's like a major, major foodie, and I did not. He doesn't look like the type for some reason. Maybe I'm judging a book by the cover. Anyway, not the first wine expert I was expecting you to name drop here. And I actually, I remember drinking with him at a club in Hollywood a really long time ago. And let's just say he was more of a quantity over quality guy. back then, and I think I probably was too. So what was it about the Susukaru that captured your

attention here? Well, first of all, the wine itself. I mean, it's just, it's amazing. Like, it's somewhere, I'd say, between like a light red wine and a rosé. It has a beautiful ruby color, like a nose full of red fruits and herbs. It's not too jammy. Just like a very unique, vibrant wine, the kind of wine that I want to be drinking all summer. And also it's a natural wine. And what does that mean? There's unnatural wines, apparently? Well, I mean, natural is kind of a catch-all term. In this case, it means the winemaker tries to intervene in the fermentation process as little as possible. So they're only using indigenous yeasts.

You know, they're not adding any chemical or commercial yeast. They're not adding additives or sulfites to the wines, as more traditional winemakers would typically do. You know, it feels like natural wines, I've heard of these. They're having a moment for the last 10 years, probably, to the point where you'll find a natural wine bar in every decent size. American city. It's like a whole thing. It's like craft beer, but for wine. And the guy who just loves natural wine will never shut up about its delicious barnyard smell or whatever. It's just like become a cliche around here especially. Yeah. I mean, I hope I'm not that cliche guy, but a lot of natural wine is a little too funky or like weird for my taste because I don't want

my wine to smell like a horse table or I don't want my wine to taste like kombucha. Yeah, I suppose I'm with you that. Then again, I don't drink much wine and I love a good boot. So what do I Well, this wine that I was talking about, it had none of that kombucha flavor. This winemaker, his goal was to let the grapes and the character of the Aetna volcanic territory shine through in his wines. And, you know, the best part of it is it sells for maybe like $30 a bottle in the U.S., which, you know, it's quite expensive. It's no like barefoot or two buck chuck. But for a wine of that quality, I think it's a steel. Because also, you know, there are risks to the natural winemaking process.

How can making wine be risky? And by the way, I know it sounds like we're sponsored by whatever wine this is and it's an infomercial, but I promise we're getting to the point. There's people hovering over the button right now. Like, do I care about this? Tell me how making wine can be risky before I start pressing you on this stuff. So, you know, winemakers typically will be using commercial yeast and additives to prevent spoilage and to have a more stable and consistent product. So, you know, not a commercial, but this guy, Cornelison, he has to be super diligent in his winemaking process. In the grapes, he selects, how he stores the wines, et cetera. So there's some irony there, you know?

It's not intervening in your wine is more expensive and more difficult sometimes than tinkering with it. I see. So this is, it sounds like preservatives in food. If you don't have the meat that's loaded with preservatives, you need to take more time and resources and actually preserving it, like keeping it cold and keeping it out of the, I don't know, whatever. So it's more expensive.

And if you just load up that baloney with nitrates, you could probably put it in your shoes on Wednesday and it would still be good. Well, it would still be baloney anyway. by Monday, and reminds me also how Starbucks, they burn their coffee beans on purpose, kind of, because otherwise if you take beans of varying quality and varying origin and yada yada, and you roast them kind of properly, they all taste different. But if you over roast them, they all taste kind of the same, which is a little bit burned, and people just get used to it.

And the last thing you want is like the Starbucks three blocks away has different coffee than the Starbucks near your house, and then you don't know which one to go to and you don't know what you're getting. So they deliberately do that. It sounds like the same thing, but with wine. Yeah, I mean, those are great comparisons. It's exactly the same where, you know, like with these commercial wines, you're adding a bunch of stuff, so you have a more consistent product, so it all kind of tastes the same. But that is because you're adding all these flavors to it by adding commercial yeast. And also, you know, it's the same with, like, it's the reason why organic food is more expensive than non-organic food. All right. So 30 bucks, I guess that sounds pretty reasonable

then, I feel like this is now finally, getting us into the question of what goes into pricing wine, which always, to me, it seemed a little bit like a marketing scam or maybe not quite a scam, but it just seemed like marketing to me. Like this wine's more expensive because we've all agreed for whatever reason that it is. Yeah, I mean, there's some truth to that, because to kind of continue my love story with the Susukaru, this wine, after I drank it, I started talking about it with my local wine guy. Of course, you've got a wine guy in every area code. I mean, you don't.

They're really useful. So anyway, we were chatting about Frank Cornelison's wines. And this wine guy mentioned to me that Frank produces what some people consider the holy grail of natural Italian wines. It's called the magma. You know, the grapes are being grown on the side of a volcano. Clever. Yeah.

And it's made from a single vineyard of 100-year-old Nerello Mascalesi vines. So there's only a couple hundred bottles produced each year. and the most recent vintage retails for, I think, around $350 a bottle in the U.S. Wow, okay. So that's more than 10 times the price of your previous fancy pants, Susukaru. So let me get this straight. Those two are produced by the same winemaker using similar methods on vineyards that are probably like a stones throw from each other on the slopes of Mount Etna volcano.

So what justifies the huge price difference? You know, it's the same as any luxury product, really. There's the rarity factor, because with such limited production, the magma is just simply much harder to come by. And then there's also the age of the vines, because the magma comes from a single vineyard of pre-phyloxera vines. Pre-filoxera. What is pre-filo? Pre-filoxera? Sorry, sorry.

So this is pretty technical. Time for some wine history. All right. The peloxera was an insect pest in the late 19th century, and it caused this huge epidemic, which destroyed most of the vineyards for wine grapes. in Europe, especially in France and Italy. So winemakers started ripping out most of the infected vines, and then one of their main solutions was to plant imported, bug-resistant rootstocks and graft new vise onto them. But so around the slopes of Mount Etna, the little bug, the peloxera, didn't make it past a certain altitude, so there they still have a fair amount of ungrafted vines from the original

rootstock that are more than 100 years old. So those are vines that are super rare and distinct. And then also, these old vines, they produce grapes with more concentrated flavors, more complexity. So I can see how that would make a difference in the final wine. You're paying for that complexity. But it also sounds like a lot of the price comes from the ability, frankly, for someone, well, like you, to wax on about it at a dinner party, kind of like you're doing right now. I mean, actually, it is interesting. So I get it. There's value in being like, this wine that I brought is so amazing and better than everyone else's. and here's why. There is value there, unfortunately. Listen, I will gladly admit to waxing poetically about this wine.

So let me wax on for just a little bit longer. Another important factor is the aging process, because the Susukaru is a wine that you're supposed to enjoy when it's young. And then the magma is aged for one and a half years in special epoxy tanks, and then another one and a half years in the bottle. So that allows it to develop even more depth than nuance. So that also means more flexing to whatever company you happen to be in at that particular moment in time. Okay. So you're making me thirsty for whatever the opposite of pretentious bullshit is.

But I'm still not convinced that it can be 10 times better than that Susu Kauru that you love so much. I mean, 10 times is it, think about if someone makes 10 times more money than you, they're loaded, right? So like 10 times better, 10 times the price? Listen, that's what I tell myself. But I think that's a way to cope with the fact that I can. cannot afford a bottle of magma. I see. I see. So some of it has to be hype, though, right? Because it just, it sounds that way, right? It sounds like you could maybe do something 99% of the way there for one third of the price.

Yeah, I mean, you're right there because, you know, this is a dynamic. Again, you see it with all kinds of luxury products. Magma has this like near legendary status in the wine world. It's got glowing reviews, high ratings from collectors, and all those things contribute to price. There's also one wildcard, which is. the winemaker, he says he uses this social pricing structure. So he actually makes the magma more expensive to subsidize his other wines, like the Sousukaru, so he can sell those at a more democratic price point, and so more people are able to try his wines. So that actually, that's smart. That makes a lot of sense. It's a great idea in terms of growing his market share and exposing people to his product. Okay, I feel like I'm starting to get a sense of what goes into pricing a bottle

of wine. So scarcity is one. Wines that are produced in limited quantities, command higher prices, surprise, supply and demand. But the story behind it also seems to go a very long way to. I read something earlier this week or last week where it was like, breaking news. Dolce and Gabana only spent $67 making one of their, I don't know, $4,000 handbags. And everybody's like, of course. This is not a $3,500 to produce piece of fabric and metal. No, it's all marketing. There's a photo shoot with Gwyneth Paltrow holding one. Like that part costs a million dollars. The rest of it is people making a purse next to another person who's making a purse for not Dolce and Gabana, right, with the same crap, maybe fake gold instead of real gold. So it's, yeah, luxury goods

are just a fascinating market. Yeah. And as you say, it's about the scarcity. So the harder it is to find a wine, the more expensive it's going to be. And it's probably the same with a handbag. You know, if it's harder to find a handbag, it'll be more expensive. Whether that's a single vineyard wine or it's from like a specific rare vintage or this like really prestigious vineyards, those are all factors. And then reputation is another big one as well because you know, you have wines from very famous wine regions like Burgundy or Napa Valley. Those will fetch higher prices just based on the wine region they're from. I see. So if you're a bargain hunter, look for the lesser known wine regions maybe. And then age is another one, right? An aged wine

obviously is going to have developed a more unique, complex flavor profile, whatever that means. Yeah. And then selling a bottle right away that is cheaper for a producer, then having to age and store it. So again, like with anything, production costs are a big factor. Cost of land, labor, storage, materials, and so on. And, you know, like most of the wines we drink will be machine harvested, but then the premium wines, for those, most winemakers, will still be handpicking their grapes. Oh, my God, my back hurts just thinking about that.

Aren't those machines now, though, better than grape pickers anyway? I feel like I saw this for strawberries on Discovery Channel. Yeah, I think they're faster. But handpicking is still easier on the grapes and vines. Because when you're a human, you tend to be a little bit more judicious and careful about how you pick the grapes, what grapes you pick. So I think right now there's not really a substitute for the trained human eye. Although, I mean, listen, I'm sure in a couple years we'll have these like AI powered grape picking machines. Yeah, but then having humans do the backbreaking labor of picking it will be part of the story.

Like, this is the only non-machine-picked grape wine that is made in this part of the world. And it's like, oh, it's better because somebody sweated their arse off going to get, like, yeah, someone's suffering. Someone put their life in danger climbing up a volcano to get these grapes for you. All right. So there are some legitimate reasons behind the higher-priced wines, but do these expensive wines actually taste better? I feel like I've seen so many, and maybe they're anecdotal nonsense, but studies where so-called expert, They get blindfolded and then they can't tell the difference between some crap from like Trader Joe's and something fancy pants from a restaurant. Yeah, I mean, do expensive wines taste better?

That's the million dollar question that we're trying to answer here. And I'm sorry to say, I don't have a straightforward answer for you because taste is super subjective and then a wine that I'm raving about might leave you totally unimpressed. But there are actual studies about this. So the Journal of Wine Economics did a study. They analyzed more than 4,000 wines that had been entered in. to 13 different competitions across the United States. And the researcher, he found that the probability of a wine winning a gold medal in one competition was completely statistically independent of whether it won a gold medal in any

other competition. There is no correlation. So it sounds like even experts can't agree on which wines taste the best, which I suppose makes sense. Yeah, I mean, but then these experts sometimes don't even agree with themselves. There's another study I like to cite, which is the same researcher, he found that only 10% of judges at the California State Fair wine competition, only 10% of judges were able to replicate their scores within the same metal group when they were tasting the same wine several times.

So, you know, there's all kinds of things that influencer bias their judgment, like the order in which they tasted the wines, the scores they gave to previous wines, even the reputation of the producer or the region. So, you know, one moment they'll give it a gold medal, the next they'll give it a silver medal, and this is the same taster. Oh, experts. Yep, they're human after all. Look, taste is subjective. I understand that.

But I would love to think that I can just judge a wine purely on how it tastes and how much I like it. But I have a feeling that you're going to burst that bubble as well. Yeah, sorry, I think I have to burst that bubble because, I mean, humans are highly suggestible. You know, our expectations do influence how we experience things. And then wine is no exception because a group of German researchers, they found that people's brain activity while they were drinking wine was influenced by the price they were told that wine costs, even when that information was completely fake. Wow, I would have loved to have been a part of that study, but maybe for beer.

Okay, so wait, they were in an MRI scanner? So were they drinking wine while laying down in an MRI scanner? Because that sounds really difficult, actually. Yeah, I mean, it wasn't a classic wine tasting. These subjects, let's call them, they were laying down in the scanner, the MRI scanner, and they had test tubes feeding them a milliliter of wine every time. So that sounds fun but also messy. I feel like there's no way you're coming out of that unstained.

No, there's not. But they gave all these participants the same wines to drink and then told them different prices. And when people believe that they were drinking a more expensive wine, you saw the areas of their brain associated with reward and pleasure become more active. And now for something that starts out energetic and bright and finishes with just a hint of capitalism. We'll be right back. Don't forget our newsletter over at Jordan Harbinger.com slash news. It's a little bite from the show, just a little something that'll affect your

psychology, the way you do things, the way you think about things, the way you live your life. In under two minutes, every Wednesday, that's our wee bit wiser newsletter. Free for y'all over at Jordan Harbinger.com slash news. A lot of great feedback from all of you so far on that. A lot of fun for us to create as well. Jordan Harbinger.com slash news. Now, back to Skeptical Sunday. So our brains are basically tricking us into enjoying expensive wines more. So people are pretending they're enjoying the expensive wines more. Our brains are telling us to enjoy it more. So it's almost like part of the, it's just part of the deal.

Yeah, I don't know if they're pretending. I think it's a thing your brain does, you know, and it's a known dynamic because it's not limited to wine. You know, there's a name for this phenomenon. Psychologists have called it the price quality heuristic, which means that we kind of subconsciously associate higher prices with higher quality. So that will then kind of affect your actual perception of the product. This kind of reminds me, this is probably adjacent to that.

But do you remember the first time you saw an iPod? I was pretty young, but... It making me feel old. But yeah, I was blown away. I was probably graduating from college. But anyway, I remember my friend bought one and opened it. And the packaging was just like, nothing I had ever seen was packaged this way. And when he opened it, it was like, press me or whatever.

And it all, the buttons lit up red. And it just looked like it was dropped by a UFO on earth. And it was just, I could, I could not wait to go and get one. I think I went like the next day and bought one, even though I couldn't afford it. There's something there when something is packaged right and priced higher. You're just like, oh, it's the best thing, even if you don't even know how it works. So I suppose the lesson here is don't underestimate the power of expectation. I think this just confirms something we all know deep down, but hate to acknowledge,

which is that we are very susceptible. to marketing. It's no coincidence. Advertising is a multi-billion dollar industry, and here I am giving away this podcast for free. Although, maybe there's a reason for that. Yeah, or maybe you should just start charging, see what happens. There we go. But, you know, I also want to note that the people in this very experiment, they were just kind of like regular, occasional wine drinkers like you and I. They weren't Somaliers or wine experts. So actually, one of the things these researchers didn't test, but were interested in is whether you can train your taste buds to reduce those placebo marketing effects. Because if you're a master of Somalié, you've undergone super rigorous training,

and that is supposed to help you identify all these different kind of technical elements in a wine so you can assess its quality. Right. Isn't that why they have blind tastings to take out factors like price and reputation, so you just focus on the actual wine itself and all you see is the wine in a glass or whatever? Yep, but I mean, I don't know if it'll surprise you, but in these blind tastings, you know, experts, they're often able to pick out grapes and vintages and regions, but generally, they're not going to be able to tell you if they're drinking an expensive wine or not. I think it's incredible. Actually, that's still impressive, man,

that they can tell by subtle taste differences, where the grapes grew that made the wine that they're drinking. I mean, that's still, like, kind of a superpower. I also think it's interesting that they can tell characteristics that are distinctive, but they can't necessarily tell or determine the quality of those characteristics. They can tell, like, oh, there's notes of this and that and the other thing. But they can't say, like, and this is a good thing. They can just tell that it's in there. Yeah, I mean, they tested that as well because there's this famous study known as the

Wine Spectator, award-winning wine tasting. And researchers had 54 wine experts, taste the selection of wines. These ranged from like $1.65 to $150 a bottle. But they didn't tell them anything about the identity of the wine. So it was a blind tasting, and the experts were unable to consistently identify which wines were expensive or even like rate the expensive wines as tasting better than the cheap wines. That's pretty eye-opening, man.

Even the best experts struggle to tell the difference without a price or reputation to go on. So that data that we're getting from our brain that says this is a good wine, it's basically a necessary part of the equation. All right. So in terms of the marketing and the reputation and all that. So let's say I'm going to a really nice restaurant and they tell me they're going to send over the Somalié to discuss the wine. Should I just be like, hey, don't bother?

It's all a bunch of hocus, focus, focus. Give me the cheapest crap on the menu, but tell me it's good. No, no. I mean, I don't want to put Somalias out of work here. I think, you know, wine experts, Somalias, they have real important expertise. They will have a wide knowledge of wine regions, of grape varieties, of wine making techniques. You know, they'll be like super knowledgeable about how you serve, store, decant wine. They'll tell you all about how you can pair it with food.

You know, a lot of these people train for this for years, especially there's this thing. thing called the Masters of Wine. Masters of Wine sounds like something from the French edition of Game of Thrones. I know what this is, though. This is like a certification, right? I did a tasting with one of these guys in Napa a long time ago for a company that was sponsoring the show. And he was really impressive.

I actually kind of felt bad wasting his time, given my absolutely barbarian-level palette for things like wine. Oh, yeah. I mean, those guys, they're part of a very super elite club. As of last year, there are only 416 Masters of Wine in the entire world from 31 different countries. So these guys, they have to, guys and girls, sorry, they have to pass a very rigorous exam, and it can take years before you pass the exam. They usually pass less than 10% of people who even participate.

That's an exam that'll test their knowledge of everything from like grape growing, winemaking to the business and marketing of wine. And the exam also includes a blind tasting of 36 wines over. three days. 36 wines. And you've got to probably nail all of those. And they still can't tell me if I'm drinking an expensive wine or not. What the heck?

I mean, to be fair. Again, they'll be able to tell you all kinds of things about this wine. They'll be able to make a really good assessment of the quality of the wine, you know, like the balance, the complexity, the potential for aging. So in theory, you know, these masters of wine, they'll be able to say, like, Jordan, this is a well-made, high-quality wine that just doesn't necessarily mean that it's an expensive wine. And I think this goes to show there's no like straightforward connection between perceived quality and price. And listen, I think that's good news for people like me who love wine.

Right, because, okay, so good wine doesn't have to be expensive. That's kind of interesting. I probably should have thought of it earlier. So what I'm getting from this is there's a lot of reasons why one bottle of wine might be more expensive than the other, but the vast, vast majority of people won't really be able to tell. That actually leaves an enormous amount of space. for the role of marketing and storytelling, but it also means that if you kind of don't necessarily need all of that all of the time, you can afford a really good bottle of wine and it doesn't have to have $300 of story attached to it. Right. But that's also why it's worth it for these wineries to invest in creating this image, this like aura of luxury and exclusivity around their wines,

because that's what's going to make people think that their wines are worth spending money on. Yeah, it's just good business. Yeah, and then, you know, to your point, there are lots of small wines. and subtle ways that they can achieve that. Because ages ago, I was just getting into wine, and I had a friend who pretended to be a real wine expert, and he told me that if the bottom of a wine bottle had what they call a punt, which is, you know, where the bottom is not entirely flat, but slightly indented, and you can kind of like put your thumb in there, that meant it was a great quality wine. Really? Aren't almost all wine bottles that way? Don't they all have that thing

in the bottom that you can put your thumb in? I'd feel like every bottle has that. Yeah, well, most bottles. Most bottles are not entirely flat and they'll have like an indentation. But I think basically what my buddy was saying is that the deeper the punt, the more expensive the wine should be. And, you know, I heard that from several people. But then later on I found out that's really just an urban legend. Yeah, oh, good old urban legend. Like when I was a kid, I thought there were alligators in the sewer system. Although if you live in Miami, there's probably some truth to that. Yeah, fair enough. And I mean, there's some historical truth to why glassblowers. used to make bottles that way. Oh, okay. You know, it made it easier for the bottles to stand up on the shelf. It helped collect the sediment as the wine ages.

And so it is true that it's like slightly more expensive to make bottles with a punt, but still there's no correlation with the quality of wine inside the bottle. I mean, it might actually be easier to make an expensive bottle than an expensive wine. So if your wine is kind of crappy or mid, you just, you're like, how do we improve this? Make the bottle look fancier. All right, fine. So you can't judge a wine by its bottle, I guess. Yeah, I mean, and, you know, I'm bringing this up because I think it shows how there's all kinds of external factors that influence how we gauge the quality of a bottle of wine.

And that's something the wine industry obviously knows and plays into with them like pretty creative marketing strategies, like how they designed the wine label, the shape of the bottle, and even the weight of the bottle. Those have all been proven to influence people's perception of a wine's quality and their willingness to pay a higher price for it. So you're telling me that I might be more likely to buy a wine just. because it has a fancy label or a heavier bottle. Yeah. I mean, another study, because they do a lot of studies on this kind of thing, found that people associate heavier, thicker glass bottles with higher quality wines. So in this study, they present the exact same wine, same label,

bottles of different weights, and they found consumers are willing to pay more for the wine in the heavier bottle. So, I mean, go to any winery and, like, look at their more premium wines. Usually they'll use kind of like heavier, more substantial bottles for them. Maybe they should put some lead in there. That'll really boost sales. Follow me for more food marketing tips. Yeah, brilliant. Brilliant ID Jordan. I think health authorities might have a slightly different opinion on that one. The shape of the bottle, that's another signifier. Think of a classic burgundy bottle has those nice sloping shoulders or a Riesling bottle is tall and slender.

Those designs kind of give them this air of tradition and of quality. And it'll also help you notice them quicker when you go to the wine shop. Ah, that's clever. Yeah, because otherwise all the bottles look the same. I think I've noticed that a little bit here and there. The labels are important too, right? Because that's kind of the first thing I noticed, especially if the bottles look similar. The most expensive wines, it's like a lawyer's business card, right? It's simple, it's elegant. There's just like a couple of bits of data on there, the name of the winery, the vintage in simple, gold, silver lettering, whatever. There's not like a rainbow in a kangaroo on the front or something. No, I mean, Jordan, are you going to believe me if I tell you there's a study for this?

I would indeed believe that there's a study for that. Wow, there's a lot of funding going into studying wine, obviously. I know. There's a lot of money in wine. So, I mean, so in this study, they found simple black and gold labels. People perceive them as more luxurious. And then if it has like a bright color, a quirky label like kangaroos and rainbows you were talking about, those are perceived as casual and affordable. Yeah, it's funny because this study could probably have been done by just asking a few people what they thought of each label. Because it's so obvious. This is not deep signs. So to some degree, you can make people believe a wine is expensive purely by its design. And it's really hard to tell just by tasting whether a wine is expensive or not. So it feels like it has to be very easy to fool people. And I'm wondering if that's why I keep hearing about all these quite spectacular cases of wine fraud.

Have you heard about this at all? Yeah, yeah. I mean, in the world of fine and rare wines, wine fraud is much more common than people realize. I think I read somewhere that experts estimate that as much as 20% of the fine wine market could be counterfeit, especially when it comes to like the rare expensive bottles. Wow, one fifth of wine being fake is a massive share of the market. I'm trying to think of anything else where 20% of it is fake. That's ridiculous.

Right. And not in like the regular wine market, but in the rare wine market, that's what they think, like one in five. Right, not at Bevmo. Like you don't have count. Yeah. No, there's, you know, your $10 bottle of wine. they probably won't bother faking. No, that would be a waste of time, for sure.

It's like counterfeiting a $5 bill. And in this case, there's this documentary that you might have heard of called Sour Grapes. Yes. It's about one of the most notorious cases of wine froult. It involves Rudy Kournjawan. He's this Indonesian wine collector who was convicted of selling millions

and millions of dollars worth of counterfeit wines. So this guy, for years, he would mix cheaper wines together and then just pass them off as rare, expensive vintages. And in doing so, he was able to fool like super experienced collectors, like billionaires, like William Koch. So they found that this guy sold as much as $550 million worth of fake wine. That's by far the largest wine fraud case in history. That is so much more massive than I thought. $550 million.

If you'd said $50 million, I would have been impressed. But half a billion dollars worth of fake wine. How did they get away with it for so long? You know, I think he was a master at exploiting the trust and lack of transparency in the high-end wine market. This is someone who had an encyclopedic knowledge of rare wines, so he was able to create elaborate fakes, you know, very convincing fabricated labels and bottles. It sounds like he put a lot of real legwork into it then. If he was not only, he's not only faking the wines, right? He's faking the bottles. He's faking the labels. And there's probably some

sort of provenance certificates, right? Like, where did you buy this? Where did it come from? So how did he get caught? Yeah, I mean, it's a real thriller in this story. There's all these experts in the wine world that started to become a little suspicious of him, including this woman, Maureen Downey, she's like an eagle-eyed wine expert, and she started to notice minor inconsistencies in the bottle that he was selling. But still, it was hard to find like actual evidence of fraud. But then he got a little sloppy. He sold several bottles of a rare burgundy. This is a 1945 Domain Ponce, Clos Saint-Den-Denie, at an auction in New York. Ooh, that sounds very fancy.

And I mean, very, very. Yeah, wow, that's when you bust out the French. Yeah, and it's 80 years old. Holy smokes. Yeah, I mean, just after World War II. And can you believe his luck, this auction was attended by Laurent Ponceau? This is the head of that winery. And this winery, it had been in his family for generations.

So he knew all about those wines. And he knew that his family had not produced wine from that particular vineyard until 1982. So this guy was trying to, you know, pass out a bottle from 1945. So that raised some like obvious concerns. And then the FBI starts investigating, long story short, Rudy Corniowen was sentenced to 10 years in prison in order to pay $28.4 million in restitution to his victims. The 10 years in prison sucks, but 28.4 million in restitution is peanuts

compared to what this guy made off that fraud. And that's wild, man. What a detail to get tripped up on. That's like when they caught the son of Sam's serial killer because something to do with a parking ticket. It's like otherwise that guy would have just gotten away with it. What an amazing grift that was. With that kind of money swirling around,

there must be a whole cottage industry now around authenticating wine, preventing wine fraud, certifying cases of wine. I don't know. Yeah. I mean, in this case, this famous Kournianian case, also increased demand for wine authentication services. So Maureen Downey, who I mentioned earlier,

she was one of the first to raise suspicions of Kournialwan. She helped out the FBI. She testified against him, and now she's become this kind of like Columbo or Sherlock Holmes of the wine world. So she's made it her mission to uncover wine fraud and help collect her spotting fake bottles. That is such a great niche, man. Nancy Drew, in the case of wine. Yeah, I mean, the wine-focused Nancy Drew, she has her own consulting company, and several others likeers exist now, too. They all kind of use a combination of scientific analysis and their expert knowledge to look at the authenticity of a bottle. So they go and like analyze the chemical composition of a wine. They research its provenance.

They examine the bottle and label for inconsistencies. They go and do some like archival research, like all these things to spot the fake bottles of wine. This is like CSI, Napa Valley. So let's talk a little bit more about this world of rare wine collectors. I'm quite intrigued by this. So we've talked a lot about what goes into wine prices for the average Joe like like us, meaning bottles you or I could pick up at Bevmo or whatever. But I assume that this. This aforementioned rare wine market just operates on a totally different level. Yeah, I mean, it's in the name, right? It's the rare wine market.

So that's the determining factor. It's all about scarcity. It's all about provenance. It's also about historical significance. Those things can really drive prices to astronomical heights, where a single bottle can sell for hundreds of thousands of dollars. I feel like we hear more and more about these high-profile auctions. So has the rare wine market, is that growing in recent years?

It sounds antiquated to me, but it sounds like. something I just don't know anything about. So for all I know, it's tripled overnight. No, no, it's been growing, like, especially since the pandemic, because that was a boom time for all kinds of collectibles. I see. You know, expensive watches, luxury handbags and Pokemon parts. Like, all those just boomed in price. So in 2021, global wine auction sales hit their record high. $520 million worth of rare wines were sold that year. Wow. You know, there's also been a correction in the wine markets. The Livex Fine Wine 1000 index. They track 1,000 index. They track 1,000 leading. wines, it fell 14% in 2023. And then you have the Champaign 50 index. This double during the

pandemic between like 2020 and the end of 2022. But then last year, you know, another correction, it fell by 18%. Speaking of fancy pants marketing, how about a word from our sponsors? We'll be right back. Thank you all for listening. All the deals, discount codes, and ways to support the show are on one searchable, clickable place, Jordan Harbinger.com slash deals. Please consider supporting those who support the show. Now for the rest of skeptical Sunday. I still, I'm impressed they have indexes tracking these things. So this really is like any other major commodity market then. So give me some examples. What are some of the most expensive bottles ever sold at auction? Yeah, I think the main example or the most famous one is a bottle of

1945 Romani-Contei, which sold for $558,000 at a Sopoese auction in 2018, so six years ago. You know, it still has the record for most expensive regular 750 milliliter bottle of wine ever sold. Wow. And, you know, that particular wine, that particular vintage is considered one of the greatest burgundy's ever made. And there's only a couple bottles left. I wonder what that amounts to on a per sip basis. Yeah, I mean, I'm pretty bad at math, but I think it's like a small SUV with each gulp.

Oh, my gosh. I mean, there's some other, you know, ridiculous examples. Like there's a champagne bottle that they sold as an NFT in collaboration with BordeApe. Okay. So for those who don't know, NFTs are, in short, a sort of cryptocurrency adjacent digital art. And yes, there's more to it and no, we're not going to explain it. But it's all you need to know is it's blockchain related and you can't hold it in your hand. Yeah.

And Bordebe is, you know, they're cartoon monkeys basically. So this was a cartoon monkey champagne bottle, which sold for $2.5 million in 2022. It was essentially a picture of that tied to the blockchain. You can't even put it on a shelf because it doesn't exist. The bottle was real. Oh, the bottle was real. The bottle was real, but the cartoon monkey is fake. Okay.

Even still, probably not worth $2.5 million. Nope. I don't think any bottle of wine is worth $2.5 million. And there's another one called The Taste of Diamonds Champagne. That's a bottle they engraved with gold. And then they built an 18-carred diamond into the label. Oh, my God. That one a little over 10 years ago, they sold for $1.9 million.

Wow, that's dumb. Yeah. I mean, I think they're all kind of dumb, ridiculous examples. Although my favorite of these crazy expensive wines, I think, is the wine that went to space. Ooh, space wine. Is that like something Neil Armstrong smuggled aboard Apollo 11 or what? What's going on here? Yeah, it's something like that.

I mean, they basically sent 12 bottles of Petrus 2000. That's considered one of the best wines in the world. They sent them to the international space. station where they orbited for more than 14 months, just going around the Earth. So that's, I mean, look, it's incredible, I guess. But what is the point of sending wine into space? Why? Great question. I mean, it was part of a privately funded research study on food and agriculture in space. So they were trying to examine the effect of zero gravity and space conditions on the aging process of wine. Okay. So when, yeah, I mean, when the bottles returned to

Earth in January of 2021. They had some scientists to analyze them, and then they also had like a group of super lucky wine tasters. They got to compare the space-aged wine with the earth-aged bottles. What did it taste like burning tax dollars? No, I mean, it did taste more smoky and more floral. And that's according to a journalist and wine writer Jane Anson. She was one of the tasters.

She said, you know, it's noticeably difference, but she also said those are the aromatics, you know, the smoky floral ones, that would develop. when you age Petrus anyway, whether you age it in space or, you know, in your cellar. Right, in your cellar, your basement, yeah. Yeah, she couldn't even say if it was better or worse. I guess in that case, it probably makes more sense to age that bottle in your basement in Michigan than on the International Space Station. But what is a bottle of space-aged Petrus 2000?

What does that run me? So in May of 2021, Christie's, they sold a bottle of the space wine, along with like a regular bottle of the Petrus so that the buyer could compare it to. This was a private sale, so they didn't disclose the final price, but they set the estimated price at $1 million. Okay, so what is a regular bottle of Petrus then? According to Winesurcher.com, the average price of a 2000 petrus will be like around $7,000 for one bottle. So $7,000 versus, you know, $1 million. So you're paying $990 plus $1,000 for the Battle of Space to age. Yeah, $993,000 for space. ice wine and like $7,000 of regular petrious.

Wow. Okay. You know, I'm wondering, if you just spent a million dollars on two bottles of wine, are you even going to drink it? Or is it just a collectible at that point? Is it the Pokemon card that was it Logan Paul wears around his neck? You know, like you're not going to use that stuff, right? You're not going to play it.

Yeah. I mean, I think you got to ask these collectors because I think there's a few of them who they'll probably enjoy the flex, you know, opening up this super rare bottle of wine for like a special occasion. and maybe they want to impress a date. But, you know, I think mostly it's probably more an investment or like a status symbol because generally, you know, the value of those wines, it's way more tied to the rarity

and the history of them than their actual taste. That makes sense. You're going to open that when you can finally get an audience with the Prince of Saudi Arabia or something like that. So what makes a wine a sought after collectible? Beyond age, reputation, or, you know, sending it to space or engraving it with diamonds? Is there something else that makes it collectible?

Does it go with other things that you have? Well, yeah, I think everybody loves a good story. They love a celebrity connection, right? So the historical significance of a particular bottle plays a big role. Several of the most expensive wines that have ever been sold have a connection to Thomas Jefferson, you know, the founding father. He was one of history's most famous wine collectors. This guy, you know, he was ambassador to France.

And he spent a lot of his time visiting the vineyards of Bordeaux, of Burgundy, buying up wine for his collection. Hard at work is the ambassador to France going to different wineries and buying wine. I think he kind of finagled a dream job for himself. But then in 1985, supposedly, someone discovers this like bricked up cellar wall in Paris and they find a wine cellar that's more than 150 years old. Several bottles in there have Thomas Jefferson's initials, TH and J. So those bottles, they end up in the hands of this famous German guy, wine collector, music producer, Hardy Rodenstock.

He works together with Christie's, the auction house. They authenticate the bottles, they auction of several of them, and then in 1989, a bottle of 1869, Chateau Lafitte, supposedly owned by Thomas Jefferson, sold for more than $150,000. So this is, you know, 35 years ago at the time the most expensive wine ever sold. Now, guess what? Yeah, I was going to say, color me skeptical. I'm guessing this is all fake.

Yep, I mean, listen, there had always been suspicions around the authenticity of these wines. So in 2005, a billionaire wine collector Bill Coke, he had some of his so-called Jefferson bottles tested by a team of experts. And these experts, they found that the bottles contained wine from the 1960s, not from the 18th century. So Jefferson, he kept really good records of his wine purchases, but very few of his bottles are still around, and even fewer can be proven to have belonged to him. Though one of those fake bottles actually ended up being one of the most expensive bottles, never sold. What do you mean never sold? Okay, this is another one of my favorite stories. William Socolon, he's this famous New York wine merchant. He had a bottle of Chateau

Margot from 1787. It had Jefferson's initials. Slash 1965, but okay, yep. And he, you know, he had this bottle and consignment from its English owner. So he was going around New York, trying to sell it for half a million dollars. People were kind of laughing at him. No one thought that he would actually be able to sell a bottle of wine for half a million dollars. But, you know, as part of his whole like PR blitz, he, he went to this very fancy Chateau-Margo dinner at this very fancy four-season's restaurant in New York. And then at the end of that night, I don't know how many glasses of wine deep, he walks into a metal tray table carrying that wine and he breaks the bottle. Oh my God, what a klutz. I sure hope that was insured. He's never going to live that one down.

Well, I mean, he actually didn't because it was literally in his obituary that was published in the New York Times. That story. Sorry about that. Sorry, folks. In poor taste. Yeah, wow. Okay. Funny thing about that story, some of the attendees, they immediately started dipping their fingers into whatever drops that they could salvage so that they could at least get a taste of this wine. The wine had chemically deteriorated, and the restaurant manager said it was completely undrinkable. Well, yeah, it's undrinkable. It's on the floor of a hotel. So, oh, hotel floor wine. Imagine that hangover. All right.

So how did this bottle a very likely counterfeit and totally undrinkable vinegar wine or whatever it ends up doing in the bottle? How did that become the most expensive bottle never sold? Just because the asking price or what? Well, so, Colin, he did have the foresight to insure the wine. So he received a $225,000 insurance payout, which, you know, he says he shared with the owner. And to this day, I think, is still, it holds the record. for the world's most expensive broken bottle of wine.

Again, though, color me skeptical, how convenient? So I wonder, is this bottle fake? And they figured, oh, there's no way to sell it without actually committing a crime. Or we're just never going to get a good asking price for this. So then he accidentally breaks it for the insurance payout. And I'm starting to wonder, do you have any examples of expensive historical wines that are not actually fake? Yeah.

I mean, in fact, I do. Because I think, you know, we've been talking about wine age and space. What about wine aged on the bottom of the ocean? There's an interesting little subset in the world of fine wines that they call shipwreck wines. Ooh, love a good shipwreck. Yeah, in 2010, for example. 47 bottles of Vef Kliko champagne were recovered from a 19th century shipwreck in the Baltic Sea. And, you know, wildly enough, these were still drinkable.

They'd spent 170 years underwater. Wow. Yeah, so some people got to taste them and they said they were sweet, but balanced by a dryest, acidity. That is absolutely incredible. I thought you were going to say this ship sank in the 90s or something and there was champagne at the bottom. A hundred and seventy years, that's mind-blowing, man. That's really impressive. Yeah, I mean, I think a lot of people agreed because those bottles sold for, you know, around like $43,000 a bottle at auction. Wow. And this gave Viv Clico, the champagne house. They gave it an idea. Oh, no. We're going to torpedo this boat so everybody

get off, send it to the bottom of the ocean. A little less drastic, but they just started experimenting with storing bottles deep in the ocean. So they've submerged 350 bottles of their champagne in the same area of the Baltic Sea where the shipwreck had been found. So they say this is some kind of experiment. They want to better understand the behavior of wine under extreme aging conditions. And that's an experiment they're going to be running for about 40 years. Every couple of years they go, they surface a few of those bottles. And then they taste and they compare them with bottles that have just been.

aged in like a regular seller. Wow. Okay. They should have put more down there because what if it's amazing? Now you got to wait like 30 more years to get it to age. I bet you they put like 35,000 bottles and they told everyone it's 350. All right. So we've had fancy single plot volcanic wines, space wines, ocean wines, fake wines made in some dudes like bathtub or whatever. But with everything you've told me, is it ever actually worth it to splurge on a really expensive bottle of wine? I mean, listen, up to you. Joe Bastienic, that's, you know, maybe you know him. He was on Master Chef. He's like a famous restaurant owner. He's a winemaker. He wrote this memoir called Restaurant Man in 2012. And there he writes, no wine should cost more than 100 bucks. And, you know, I think it's a little ironic because, you know, he has this restaurant. I live here in New York. He has a restaurant called Babbo, very fancy, Michelin-starred Italian restaurant. A lot of bottles on his list are selling for more than $1,000. So, you know, know, this is the guy telling you no wine should cost more than 100 bucks. But I think, you know, he makes a good point in the book because in the end, we're talking about fermented grape juice,

take into account the farming and the labor and the storage, what have you. There's a real limit to what it costs to actually produce 750 milliliters of fermented grape juice. So that's exactly where capitalism, market forces, and then especially marketing come into play. I love that he's like, no wine should cost more than $100, unless it's me getting the money. Then in that case, I'm all for jacking the price up 10x at my restaurant. All right, that's, well, look, hashtag capitalism. So how much, I know I feel like I keep harping on this and bugging you,

but how much should I pay for a decent bottle of wine? Is there a range or anything like that? Like, what are we talking about? There's obviously you'll find some like exceptional expensive wines, but I just don't think that a higher price guarantees you a better taste or a better experience. I mean, listen, any wine expert is going to tell you there's lots of high-quality wines that are available at affordable price points. I'd say maybe $20 to $30 a bottle is like the sweet spot.

But then past a certain price point, whether that's $50, $100, you're really no longer paying for quality. You're paying for name, for reputation, for scarcity. I guess that's good news for those of us who don't have thousands of dollars to drop on a single bottle of deep seas shipwreck slash space wine. Yeah, I mean, absolutely. I guess at the end of the day, wine is there to be enjoyed, regardless of a price stack. So my amateur opinion, amateur advice, is go and experiment with some different regions, grape varieties, different styles, and then discover what you like. And just don't get too fixated on the price. Just trust yourself, trust your

taste buds. Well, you certainly piqued my interest on this, though I would still, I would love to try that bottle of magma that you were talking about earlier in the episode. The story does get you, man. It is, it makes it special. Right. I mean, listen, start saving up and then invite me over for dinner when you track one down. You got it, man. Cheers. It's totally my pleasure, Jordan. Sante. You're about to hear a preview of the Jordan Harbinger show with Bo Lado. There is a world out there, but we don't see it as it is. So this isn't philosophy. This is just laws of physics. So if a tree falls in the one that knows there to hear, it doesn't make a sound, know. It creates energy, but the sound is a construct of your brain. So the tree exists,

the energy exists, but your brain then turns that into something useful, which is sound. Light, all the light that's coming around us, right? It's bouncing off objects, and then it's changing when it hits an object, and then it comes to our eyes, right? But our retina has no access to the light directly, nor to the surfaces. All it literally has access to is energy. And that's where your brain is actually constructing a meaning. And it's that meaning that you're seeing. You're not seeing the energy. You're detecting the energy, but you're not seeing it. Language is not a construct of the world. Think about perceptions of pain. Is pain an illusion? Of course it's not an illusion. It's a meaningful perception. But it's not something that exists in the world.

There aren't painful things in the world. If we weren't here, pain would not exist. We can't hear the five sounds of A that people in Scandinavia use, for instance. Right, right. We can't see certain shades of red that Russians can see. Really? Yeah. And it's only when you have awareness of why you're doing what you're doing that creates the possibility of doing it differently.

Now, of course, if you don't have eyes, you can't choose to see. You still have to function in a world that has gravity, right, that has light. But we have more freedom than we think we do. We have more agency than we think we do. So the world is always changing and complexifying, and we need to complexify with it. And we never could if we always just see it as it really is. For more about how our brains produce vision and the constructs our brain makes to build our world, check out episode 177 with Bo Lado here on the Jordan Harbinger Show.

Thank you all so much for listening. Topic suggestions for future episodes of Skeptical Sunday to me, Jordan at Jordan Harbinger.com. show notes on the website as well. Advertisers, deals, discounts, and ways to support this show, all at Jordan Harbinger.com slash deals. I'm at Jordan Harbinger on Twitter and Instagram. You can also connect with me on LinkedIn. This show is created in association with Podcast 1. My team is Jen Harbinger, Jace Sanderson, Robert Fogarty, Ian Baird, and Gabriel Mizrahi. Our advice and opinions are our own, and I am a lawyer, but I am not your lawyer. So do your own research before implementing

anything you hear on this show. Also, we may get a few things wrong here and there. We always do, on Skeptical Sunday. If you think we really drop the ball on something, do let us know. We're usually really receptive to that, and that makes the show better. Y'all know how to reach me, Jordan at Jordan Harbinger.com. Remember, we rise by lifting others. Share the show with those you love. If you found the episode useful, please share it with somebody else who could use a good dose of the skepticism and knowledge that we doled out today. Maybe you know a wine lover who would find this all interesting. I found this fascinating. I'm not even into wine, so I think somebody who likes wine would actually really like this

episode. In the meantime, I hope you apply what you hear on the show so you can live. what you learn, and we'll see you next time. This episode is sponsored in part by Something You Should Know podcast. Finding a new great podcast shouldn't be this hard, so let me save you some time. If you like the Jordan Harbinger show, you'll probably like Something You Should Know with Mike Carruthers. It's one of those shows that makes you smarter in a practical, useful way. Same curiosity vibe we go for here, just in a fast-focused format.

Mike brings on top experts and asks the exact questions that you'd want to ask, and the topics are all over the place in the best way. recently they've covered things like why we care so much what other people think the benefits of laughter, why sports fans get so invested, and what makes people like you or not, the through line is always the same. Smart ideas you can

actually use in real life. Something you should know has been featured in Apple's shows we love and it's got thousands of five-star reviews because it's consistently interesting. So if you want another show that scratches that I want to understand how people in the world really work itch, search for something you should know wherever you get your podcasts.

Look for the bright yellow light bulb and Start listening. You can thank me later.