by Harvey, JM
“Armand Rivincita owns eighteen bottles,” I told him. “He made the cover of Wine Spectator when he bought them. That's how big a deal that vintage is,” I stopped to think again, then added, “Phyllis Leach owns one. Hugh Fuller owns one. Montgomery Butler owns two...” I trailed off. That was all I could think of, but I was amazed to add them up and realize there were so many bottles in the Valley. After seventy years, that seemed like a lot. I mean, how many could possibly be left out of the original six hundred?
“Would Dimitri have had access to a bottle?” Hunter asked. He really didn’t know anything about wine.
“Of course. Dimitri was one of the best known wine stewards in the business, both here and in Europe. Millionaires were probably a dime a dozen to him. He could probably have told you where every remaining bottle was stored. Why do you think Blake partnered with him? Dimitri’s reputation was what brought in the big time cellaring and auction clients.”
Hunter sat there thinking about that, just like I was. A niggling suspicion had begun in the back of my mind, but I wasn’t going to voice it to Hunter. He’d just roll his eyes and act like I was meddling.
I pushed the photocopy back to him and he pocketed it.
“Is that it?” I asked, and to be honest I hoped he would say it wasn’t. That he would apologize for being a jerk, and then I could apologize for being maybe just a little sharp with him. And I might even tell him all Alexandra had told me that afternoon. As angry as I was with Hunter, being here alone in my kitchen with him reminded me of better times. I wanted to recapture that. And my conversation with Roger the day before had only highlighted that desire. Soon I would be legally free…
And then Hunter ruined it again.
“This is between us, Claire. I don’t want you running off half-cocked making any more crazy accusations.”
I shot out of my chair and pointed at the door. “Out.” I said. He opened his mouth to say something else and I repeated, “Out!”
Hunter’s expression went grim and his lips drew down in a tight frown. He stood, gathered the photocopies, and went to the door and jerked it open. He stopped there and turned back. “I shouldn’t have said that,” he said through his teeth. “I apologize.”
“Out!” I repeated, though, to be honest, my heart wanted to accept his apology, even if it was grudging. But I have my pride.
Hunter stepped through the door and banged it closed behind him. I snapped the lock on and then stood there staring through the glass at his back as he crossed the patio.
I sat in the kitchen for a long time after Hunter walked out, but I wasn’t just thinking about wringing his neck, I was also considering the wine labels. The labels looked fake to me - they were far too new to be actual labels from a 1947 vintage.
Wine fraud is a booming business. Scams in the tens of millions of dollars are not unusual. In fact, an estimated five percent of all wines sold at auction are fakes. These counterfeits range from outright fraud - where empty bottles of classic vintages are refilled with cheaper, though often very good, wine and then resold as the real thing - to even more cunning scams where off-vintages from prestigious wineries are purchased in bulk then the labels are reworked or replaced with more desirable vintage years. In fact, in 2002, bottles of the 1991 vintage of Château Lafite Rothschild - a great vintage in its own right - were relabeled and sold at auction as the more desirable 1982 vintage, a counterfeiting scam that had netted tens of thousands of dollars for the thieves.
And with that thought, I was back to seriously considering Blake as a murder suspect.
With Blake’s contacts in the wine industry, it was easily conceivable he could fake a premium vintage and sell it either at his own auctions or to some unsuspecting third party. And if Dimitri had found out, that would have been a perfect motive for murder…
But if a fraud like that was uncovered, Blake would end up in jail and Star Crossed would be out of business. Why would Blake take the risk? Star Crossed seemed to be doing well, though, as Blake had pointed out that afternoon, sales were down across the industry. Could Star Crossed be in financial trouble? Had Hunter checked their finances? I had no idea, and I sure wasn't going to ask. But I had another source who might be able to give me an answer.
I glanced at my watch. It was quarter after eleven. My soon to be ex-husband was probably still having dinner at some trendy hotspot with his new girlfriend. Unlucky her. I punched up his number and hit ‘CALL.’
“My lovely bride-not-to-be,” he said. “Two conversations in the same year. That has to be a record for us. Remember when we used to talk for hours? The good old days?”
Actually, I remembered listening to him talk for hours, but I didn’t point that out. I needed a favor.
“Some of them were good,” I replied diplomatically, then asked, “Am I interrupting?”
“Not a bit,” he replied. “Have you changed your mind about a settlement?”
“No, I haven’t. Save your money. I have a quick question, and you might not be able to answer it: what’s Blake Becker’s financial situation?”
“Blake?” he said. “He doesn’t owe you money, does he?”
“He’s agreed to auction off some of the Reserve for me,” I told him.
“Hmm,” he said and nothing more, but that ‘hmm’ had me on the edge of my seat.
“Should I be concerned?”
“You might want to reconsider that divorce settlement…” he trailed off, his jovial tone gone, replaced by concern.
“Spit it out, Roger,” I yelled into the phone.
“Now that really is like old times,” he said and laughed.
“Roger…”
“Okay. We do handle Star Crossed’s accounts,” he said. “So you didn’t hear this from me, but Blake has not managed his money well. It took every penny he inherited from his parents to build that cellar and it’s only half leased. On top of that, his auctions aren’t doing well, so commissions are down. The economy is recovering, but luxuries like fine wine are the last to rise. You know that better than most.”
“So, he’s hurting?” I asked.
“Well…he’s paying his bills somehow, but I see the ledger sheets and it can’t last. But who knows, he found a way to pay off his debts last year when I was sure he was going to go under. Maybe he’ll pull another rabbit out of his hat.”
“He almost went under last year?” I was surprised I hadn’t heard any rumors about that. In Napa – just like every other small community - no one’s business is truly their own.
“He was three months behind on the two mortgages we hold. We were literally days from serving papers on him when he paid the past due amount plus all penalties. In cash. The board of directors wasn’t thrilled. We’d have been happy to take the property. Land is always a good investment in California, if you’re in it for the long haul.”
“Bankers are always happy to foreclose,” I said with more than a touch of rancor. As a struggling winemaker myself, I could sympathize with Blake on that score.
“It’s business, Claire, not personal.”
I rolled my eyes at that, but let it go in order to ask another question. “Is that why he sold part of the business to Dimitri?” I said. “To get the cash together to stay afloat?”
“No. Dimitri didn’t pay anything for his shares in Star Crossed. His contribution to the business was his client list and his prestige. That bought him forty percent of the business on a prorated ten year option plan. I’d guess he didn’t own more than five percent of the company when he was killed.”
I went silent after that. I was wondering if that financial crisis last year had been the impetus for Blake to start faking bottles of rare wine? Is that how he brought his mortgage up to date?
Roger interrupted my thoughts. “This is between us, my dear. Bankers are supposed to be tight-lipped as well as tight-fisted.”
“Don’t worry. I won’t say anything to compromise you.”
“I’m not all that worried,” Roger repli
ed with another laugh. “One more martini and I won’t even remember I told you. Bye!” Roger cut the connection. For a moment I was tempted to call Hunter and immediately break my word to Roger, but I hesitated. Hunt would just think I was meddling, and I didn’t feel like wrangling with him again tonight. Instead I made the rounds of the house, locking everything up tight, and trudged upstairs to my bedroom.
Chapter 21
For some reason, probably utter exhaustion, I slept like a rock through a dreamless night, but I still felt like a hotwired corpse when I climbed out of bed at 6:00AM.
I went down to the cellar after a quiet breakfast on my own. I needed to taste the barrels of 2012 cabernet again, though I was loathe to do it without Samson present - It was our wine after all - but I couldn’t put it off. I went down the row of large oak barrels with the wine thief and a glass, pulling the plastic corks from the bungholes and taking small amounts from each. I convinced myself it was the dimness of the lights and not my failing eyesight that had me squinting and holding the glass close to my nose as I swirled and tilted. The wine looked clear and free of sediment and held the glass well, with long, fat legs. I sipped a small amount, sucking air across my palate, then spat it into a steel bucket I was dragging along for that purpose. Wine tasting is not a very ladylike endeavor, I’m afraid. I often forgo the spitting - I hate to waste great wine – but being drunk at 8:00AM was not good for your health or your work ethic.
In the end, I was very well satisfied with the wine. In fact, I had to agree with Samson: this might be our best vintage ever. But we couldn’t take all the credit. 2012 had been a beautiful year in Napa, with a warm, dry spring, an early bud break, and just the right amount of rain to produce steady flowering and an even growth of fruit. The summer that followed was the most perfect I could recall in my fifty-something years in the Valley. Warm days and cool, foggy nights are a winemaker’s dream. Too often we get just the opposite.
And now it was time for bottling. All I was waiting for was a cool snap. And for my winemaker to stop playing America’s Most Wanted…
Samson never made an appearance that day, nor did he call. Maybe he really had quit?
No, he couldn’t do that, I’d kill him first. I refused to call him, either - pride is my biggest sin - but I thought about him all morning. Not of killing him - well maybe a little - but of what he was facing in court.
Victor rousted me out of the cellar at noon and demanded lunch. He got a salad with goat cheese. He asked about meat and I offered him tofu. He made a gagging sound at that, then proceeded to wolf down four helpings of salad and half a loaf of bread.
I ate with him, but I was silent through lunch, thinking about Hunter’s visit last night and getting mad all over again. But I wasn’t just thinking about Hunter and me; I was thinking again about Blake Becker and the wine labels found in Dimitri’s pockets.
Lots of people collect corks and labels; there’s actually a strong enough market there are forgeries made to profit from that hobby. But I was thinking of the crooks who create fake labels to create counterfeit bottles of great vintages, a much more profitable scam. And Blake Becker, a man in financial trouble, had the keys to a cellar containing millions of dollars in rare and vintage wines… Conceivably, as I had thought last night, he could be selling fakes at his quarterly auction, but that afternoon I had a new thought – what if Blake was stealing wine from his clients, selling that and replacing those bottles with counterfeits filled with grocery store wine? That would lower the risk since he would be selling the real thing while maintaining nominal control of the fakes. And - since most collectors buy rare wines for investment, not to drink - it was a crime that could go undetected for years. Right up until someone pulled a cork and got Two-Buck Chuck instead of Grand Cru…
And Armand and his eighteen bottles of Domaine de la Romanée-Conti could have been the pinnacle of that scam, at sixty thousand dollars a bottle.
But that was not an accusation I was willing to make to Hunter.
Not yet, anyway…
After lunch, I made Victor do the dishes while I went to the computer in the tasting room.
I googled ‘Domaine de la Romanée-Conti, vintage 1947 for sale’ and got five million hits, most of which were trying to sell me everything but Domaine de la Romanée-Conti - like time shares in Napa, wine country vacations, wine cruises and dinners, and every other vintage of wine on the planet. But the search also produced dozens of online auction houses.
I was amazed at how many there were, ranging from consignment sites like eBay for wine, to the more prestigious auction houses like Sotheby’s, Hart Davis Hart, and Zachys. I have to admit I was drooling as I perused the catalogues, staring at bottles of vintage French Burgundies and Bordeaux as well as many more from closer to home, like HawkWood and Montour, none of which I could afford.
It was on one of the smaller sites that I finally hit pay dirt.
The name of the site was Gavin’s Fine Wine and Spirits, based out of Sacramento. They claimed to be the largest auction house and retailer in Northern California, though I had never heard of them.
Gavin’s had pages of impressive vintages from every corner of the globe, including a pair of imperial-sized bottles of Romanée-Conti ’47. I thought of Armand’s eighteen bottles and quickly did the math. Blake would have needed sixteen of Armand’s bottles to fabricate a pair of Imperials. And, due to the rarity of bottles that size, an imperial would sell for far more than the combined value of the eight normal-sized bottles needed to create it. A very lucrative scheme, judging by the current bid price of three hundred and ten thousand dollars each. Gavin’s estimated value was set at three hundred and fifty thousand a bottle. I buzzed through the rest of Gavin’s pages, more than a dozen of which were devoted to impressive Burgundy Grand Crus wines, like Clos de Vougeot, La Tâche, Romanée-Saint-Vivant, and a half dozen other prestigious Châteaux. The last three pages were all California reds, mostly from small wineries like my own, including three wines I had tasted just a few weeks before at Blake’s tasting dinner - 2005 HawkWood, 2003 Sine Colette, and 1997 Chateau Montour.
Those three wines - ones I knew Blake Becker had access to, including the exceedingly rare ’47 Romanée-Conti - all appearing on the same list was suspicious enough, but what I saw on the last page made my heart skip a beat. It was a listing for five bottles of Violet’s 1992 cabernet. It was day three of that auction and the current bid price was two hundred dollars a bottle, more than triple what I had sold it for two decades before.
I sat there staring at the description, a very flattering one touting the ’92 as the first vintage of a winery that had reached cult status, with nothing but up-potential for future resale. It was possible one of my original buyers had listed the wine for resale - many collectors treat wine as a business, buying not to drink it but for later resale - but I doubted this was the case. We had made only two thousand cases that year, and I had sold most of that myself by the bottle and half-case to tourists who were making the circuit of the wine trail. I found it impossible to believe anyone but me had that many bottles on hand. I only had ten bottles left myself.
Five of which were stored in Star Crossed’s cellar...
There was a ‘Contact Us’ tab at the bottom of the web page to send Gavin’s an email, but there was a phone number listed as well. I grabbed the phone on my desk and started dialing.
A young woman answered. “Gavin’s Fine Wine Auctions, Marlene speaking,” she said. “How may I help you?”
“I have some questions about a vintage cabernet you’re offering for sale,” I replied. “You have—” I began, but she cut me off and went into a spiel that seemed well rehearsed.
“All auctions are seven days long. The final bid price does not include the buyer’s premium which is fifteen percent. Only major credit cards or PayPal are accepted. Payment must be assured before a bid can be placed. The quality of the wine purchased is not guaranteed. Older vintages are subject to fluctuations in their environment
—”
She might have gone on like that forever, but I couldn’t take anymore. She had an annoying habit of ending every sentence on a high-note, making a statement sound like a question.
“Marlene!” I interrupted. “I need to talk to someone about consigning wine to be auctioned.”
Unfortunately she had a spiel prepared for that as well.
“Selling wine at one of our auctions is as easy as filling out the online questionnaire. In the questionnaire you will be asked for the vintage, classification, the provenance of each bottle, and your reserve price. After submitting the questionnaire Mr. Gavin will contact you personally to discuss—”
I held the phone away from my ear and said, “May I speak to Mr. Gavin, now?”
“Mr. Gavin is very busy. Our auctions run twenty-four hours a day—”
“I’m interested in the bottle of ‘47 Domaine de la Romanée-Conti,” I lied.
Mentioning the most expensive wine in their catalogue got her attention. “One moment please,” she said and I was treated to Muzak from the ‘70’s.
“This is Gerald Gilmore,” a man said, cutting off the Muzak. “Mr. Gavin is unavailable, but I’m sure I can help you. I understand you’re interested in the Romanée-Conti?”
“Not really, it’s out of my price range,” I said, dropping the subterfuge. “I’m interested in the five bottles of the 1992 Violet Vineyard cabernet.”
“Excuse me?”
I backtracked. “My name is Claire de Montagne,” I began. “I own Violet Vineyard. The 1992 is my earliest vintage and, until I saw your catalogue, I would have guessed I had the last ten bottles on the planet.”
That elicited a long pause before he said, “And you’re interested in selling those with us?” he asked, then continued without waiting for my reply, launching into the same spiel Marlene had given me. “Selling wine at one of our auctions is as easy as filling out the online questionnaire. In the questionnaire you will be asked for the vintage, classification, the provenance—” he began.