Weekend Cooking: Sour Grapes (Documentary)

If you live in the USA, then this week (and weekend) is all about the turkey and traditional family holiday recipes. We had a very quiet holiday and I (so far) have no new dishes to share, though I plan on maybe making turkey enchiladas tonight, so that would be different from my usual leftover reinventions.

One nice thing about the holiday weekend is having time to watch some movies. One film that fascinated me was Reuben Atlas and Jerry Rothwell's documentary Sour Grapes (2016). Despite my vow to learn more about wine, the subject of the film -- a huge wine fraud scandal -- was new to me. I guess I just don't pay attention to wines that sell for $10,000 a bottle. (Hum, I wonder why.)

So here's the story in a very small nutshell: Once upon a time, wine collecting (as an investment) and wine auctions were the domain of a few older rich white guys. In the 1990s, things began to change when a young man named Rudy Kurniawan hit the scene, bidding on wines and driving the prices into the stratosphere. He was generous and nice and eventually befriended Hollywood bigwigs, financial wiz kids, and hot-shot auction houses.

Then Kurniawan got involved with selling wine and even helped one New York wine shop sell more than $35 million (yes, you read that right) in wine in just a couple of years. His wines and auctions caught the eye of Burgundy vintner Laurent Ponsot, who began to smell a rat. As a result of several private and federal investigations, Kurniawan was arrested and tried for fraud . . .  for selling fake wines.

Sour Grapes is all about this scam. We meet Kurniawan's friends and foes and victims. We also get a look at the investigations and evidence and trial. Although the documentary starts out a little disjointed, the sequence of events soon solidify, and I couldn't stop watching. Clearly I'm living the wrong kind of life. The amount of money people spend on wine is unbelievable. I can't imagine spending thousands of dollars for a bottle of wine; heck, I can't even imagine spending $100!

Many questions still remain about the case: Who were Kurniawan's backers? Who else was involved with pulling off the deception? How could so many people be duped? How many bottles of fake wine are still in circulation? Can wine collectors ever be sure of what they're buying?

Watch Sour Grapes if you like true crime, if you want to see a different look at the wine world, and if you want to see Bill Koch's absolutely amazing wine cellar. I saw this film streaming on Netflix, but I bet it's available elsewhere too. (The still shows vintner Laurent Ponsot.)

_______

Weekend Cooking is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share: Book reviews (novel, nonfiction), cookbook reviews, movie reviews, recipes, random thoughts, gadgets, quotations, photographs, restaurant reviews, travel information, or fun food facts. If your post is even vaguely foodie, feel free to grab the button and link up anytime over the weekend. You do not have to post on the weekend. Please link to your specific post, not your blog's home page.

_______