My Article: Has Fake Wine Finger-Pointing Gone Too Far?

Wine collector Henry Tang

The recent lawsuit filed by arguably the world’s greatest wine collector against an outspoken Los Angeles-based lawyer underlines how some people have had enough of unsubstantiated fake wine allegations from pundits on the internet.

Don Cornwell, the Los Angeles lawyer in question, had been a longtime fake wine finger-pointer on the US-based internet wine forum WineBerserkers.com. I occasionally read his various allegations about wine authenticity over the years – usually diatribes about certain offerings in auctions. To give him credit, I think he got it right a few times, but little seemed seriously researched and, for the most part, simply amounted to him eyeballing bottles in auction catalogues and whimsically deciding if they were fake or not.

I overheard many auctioneers, wine merchants and wine collectors in Hong Kong complain about Cornwell’s inaccuracies, yet they seemed afraid to confront him about his actions.

All that changed with Tang’s lawsuit last month. Cornwell publicly stated that a number of the lots in Tang’s Christie’s March 13 wine sale were fake. The former Hong Kong Chief Secretary for Administration and last year’s candidate for the Special Administrative Region’s head position says all the wines were authentic.

A real bottle of DRC Montrachet

Among the bottles Cornwell tagged “fake” were a selection from Burgundy’s Domaine de la Romanée-Conti (DRC): A methuselah of 1971 La Tâche, a case of 1978 Montrachet and three bottles of 1959 Romanée-Conti. Both the auction house and DRC themselves concur with Tang.

Anyways, I don’t have the court documents nor do I know the legalities of what appears to be a libel suit. I also don’t think the United States has any jurisdiction over the case, so I doubt Cornwell is in danger of ever going to court. Then again, I also don’t think he will be coming to Hong Kong any time soon.

What’s more surprising to me is that all this apparently could have been avoided if Cornwell had simply apologized for his apparent mistake. “Regarding the lawsuit, I am not keen on taking him to court,” Tang told me the other day. “I demanded an apology from him back in April, and was prepared to let it rest after he apologized. He refused to do so. That left me with no option but to sue him to protect my reputation.” 

Reputations are indeed important. So is getting facts right. People need to be careful with what they post on the internet, whether it’s about wine or not. Sometimes a simple apology is the best solution.