[LibWhacker]

Other victims in recent years include France's Chateau Mouton Rothschild and Australia's Penfolds Grange -- labels that command as much as $3,000 a bottle.

Arggh, rotten b*st*rds! Guess people will have no way of knowing until they open their bottles. If then.

If you've never tried a Grange before, how would you know if your bottle was counterfeit? Particularly if the counterfeiters took the trouble to replace the wine with half-way decent but less expensive juice. Even Parker gets them wrong sometimes, despite having tasted the wine many times (though I doubt very much you could trick him with some really cheap substitute). Me, OTOH...

If the counterfeiters replaced the Grange with TBC, would a retailer reimburse the customer? Not bloody likely, unless the person was a really valuable customer. Grrrr...

Well, all the more reason to stick with American wines, though there is no inherent reason American wines will remain immune from counterfeiting in the long run, some of the prices are already high enough to tempt any counterfeiter.

[quantim]

though there is no inherent reason American wines will remain immune from counterfeiting in the long run, some of the prices are already high enough to tempt any counterfeiter.

That's rather haunting, correctly so. I'll venture a guess the American high-enders are snatched so quickly that the labels never get to the aftermarket, so to speak, therefore not a target for fakery.