February 28, 2025 • 42 mins
I love it when a plan doesn't come together, because it ends with us getting wine tipsy in a relaxed feel episode. This week there wasn't enough info to flesh out an entire episode so we instead talk about the history of wine and some recent scandals surrounding one of the oldest vices known to humanity.
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(00:02):
Wall Street veteran Bernard Madoff has been arrested and
charged with running a $50 billion Ponzi scheme.
Congress wants to know what caused the Enron meltdown.
And while the collective rage currently is focused on
Worldcom, Tyco CEO Dennis Koslowski was convicted of
looting hundreds of millions of dollars.
This is one of the biggest fraudcases ever.
(00:23):
Their president is a crook. Well, I'm not a crook.
Find out more on this week's episode of White Collars, Red
Hands. As long as there are rich
people, there will be frivolous things to spend money on, and a
lot of money at that. Maybe it is 10s of thousands of
(00:46):
dollars for an exclusive piece of grass where you can knock a
small ball into a small hole. Maybe it's millions of dollars
on artwork that looks like it could have been made by a
blindfolded monkey in a basementwith a hand tied behind its
back. All right, Maybe it is over
$100,000 to a porn star that youprobably had mediocre sex with
(01:08):
because your Cialis didn't kick it on time and thinking of your
daughter just didn't do the trick this time.
You know, whatever it is. Or maybe it is on bottles of
fruit mixed with mixed and infected with fungus that was
held in a damp cellar for longerthan you've been alive.
And it's the last one that we'retalking about today.
(01:29):
Wine. We already delivered you the
story of the $30 million wine fraud perpetuated by Rudy Rudy
Kerniawan. But wine fraud has been a long
time con because wine has been along time staple of humanity.
Today we delve into a palate cleanser episode to talk about
wine and a few scandals that centered around the holiest of
(01:52):
substances that still fucks you up.
You know, and then talking aboutwine so much, it's just kind of
a little cheesy, don't you think?
You're going with a pun, you're doing cheese puns to start off.
I think we've done cheese puns before.
Old material. That's hack.
It's pretty American of US if you can think of it.
(02:13):
Do I know do? I do you not.
Do you not appreciate my craft? Cheese.
American cheese, that's. A That took me a long time.
It did. That took me a long time.
I'm embarrassed about that. The joke really aged, actually
so. We're not even talking about
cheese, is the thing. You, you're like, you're like 2°
(02:34):
of separation from what we're talking about today.
Cheese puns are easier than winepuns, and you eat cheese with
wine, so. No, I no, I get it.
Anyway, welcome back everyone. My name is Kashawn.
And I'm Nina. And this is another episode of
White Collar's Red Hands. To be very honest with you
today, the we were supposed to do a main story today.
(02:58):
And when I started doing the research for it, it was really
quick because I found everythingon the topic in like 15 minutes.
And then I was like, that's not going to do it.
Shoot. So I had to do AI do do a last
minute audible. And instead we're doing a an
aggregate episode, a compilationepisode of a couple of wine
(03:20):
scandals. And at the very beginning we're
gonna talk about the history of wine.
I'm excited. And then more than that, we
actually have do. You want me to grab the other
one? Sure.
We actually have some real wine because we're both over the age
of 21. We're both over the age of 30,
so here we are with our wine andthey're actually important to
(03:45):
today's topics. So as we get to them, we'll open
the wine and we'll taste it along with telling you the
stories. And if you would like to drink
along with us, we are drinking Cote d'orone, which is from
France, the 2023 year lot 162. That's a good year.
We're also drinking the 2023 Romole from Romole.
(04:08):
Whatever. It's from Tuscany, it's from
Italy. OK, a little bit about wine.
Are we gonna drink it? We drink it when we get to the
stories. Getting drunk has a long and
storied history that, as far as we can tell, begins somewhere
around 6000 BCE at the latest. The practice already seemed
(04:28):
prevalent across multiple regions, as casks for winemaking
have been found dating back to 6000 BCE.
The oldest was found in modern day Georgia the the country, not
the state. But similar finds have been
found in modern day Iran dating back to 5500 BCE, modern day
Persia dating back to 5000 BCE, and in modern day Sicily dating
(04:51):
back to 4000 BCE. So they've been drinking wine
for a very long time. It's good.
And likely the process of makingwine is much older, though since
written language was only invented in 3200 BCE, so it
predates writing. So we really don't have a record
of the first people who left grapes forgotten in closet, nor
(05:13):
whoever had the bright idea to still try some, only to realize
it made their local villagers atleast 15% hotter after a few big
swigs. You know, I've seen Cavemen, so
I would also need to drink some wine before fornicating with a
caveman. Ooga ooga ooga ooga.
That's I agree. 8000 years ago in Georgia, grapes were
(05:35):
cultivated and smashed, then left to ferment in big clay
vessels known as cavevery. That is my I would love to do
that for a date. Go make wine, like stomp on the
grapes. Yeah, I would love to do that.
So I was watching a documentary about about wines and one of the
the wineries don't stomp on the grapes anymore, but they built a
(05:57):
whole machine that fake stomps on the grapes.
Like, they built like little little.
They're not. They're not shaped like feet,
but they said they're like feet at the bottom and they go in and
out and they even heated them upto body temperature.
Like. If someone's legs were going in
and out because for some reason they thought that would have an
effect on the chemistry it. Probably does, probably does.
(06:19):
Why wouldn't it? They said they tried other
methods and then it didn't turn out the same so they had to
build this whole new contraptionto fake stomp grapes.
I believe it. So obviously that's much more
fancy than what they had 6000 BCE in Georgia when they had
their cavevery. So back then it was unfiltered,
fermented with just wild yeast that grew on the grapes and not
(06:42):
like hand selected yeast strainsand likely not super strong.
So all of this to say, it almostdefinitely tasted like shit.
Like it was really bad comparatively to what we have
now. That being said, through the
years wine became a very important player in lifestyle
and culture, especially through religion.
Obviously we know that wine takes a prominent place in
(07:03):
Jewish and Christian faiths in many practices such as the
sacrament, which is why little Catholic children get to turn up
on Sunday. Hell yeah.
Nothing I love better than beingfed alcoholic spirits from a
chalice by a much older men and it's even better.
Everyone else has also drank outof.
And it's even better when it's at church.
(07:24):
Hey, it's blessed. But this idea of wine being
associated with blood is traced all the way back to the ancient
Egyptians who called it the blood of the gods also shows
they were primarily drinking redback then.
So don't worry though, polytheistic people loved wine
so much that they usually had a God just for it.
(07:46):
The Greeks had Dionysius, the God of wine, fertility and
revelry. Also a theater by the way.
And the festival of Dionysius was probably akin to a before
Christ ditty party with how crazy it.
Got Yeah, I would believe that. The Norse on the other hand
loved wine so much that they made their like main guy Odin,
(08:06):
the God of wine and alcohol. So very central.
But I mean, when your life is literally living in the cold and
pillaging villages all the time,you're probably going to put
wine on a pedestal. I.
Mean they also had a lack of funback then.
So I mean, all you really had for fun was like drinking and
sex. Yeah, life was.
So yeah, it makes sense that they had all these gods that
(08:27):
celebrated those things. You died.
Yeah, literally at like 40. All your kids died early.
All of them. You had eight and maybe 2 made
it. Yeah.
So yeah, might as well get drunk, right?
Hell yeah, brother. Everyone was an alcoholic,
basically. That's what we're saying.
And not to be left out, religions of the Eastern world
also celebrate wine. The Hindu goddess Varuni is the
(08:50):
God of wine, and then the Chinese have a goddess Yidi,
who's also the God of wine. So they all kind of got one I.
Didn't know that the that China had gods and goddesses.
Yeah, there's, there's folk godsand goddesses.
Fun fact, the depiction of the Buddha, the fat guy that you see
that is actually a Chinese folk God that they adopted into
(09:11):
Chinese Buddhism, which is why he did not know that the
original Buddha very skinny because he's an ascetic monk, so
he didn't really eat a lot. Yeah, so.
The fat one's more fun. And back in the day, wine didn't
have a lot of variation as it was once again largely believed
to be red. Which by the way, another wine
fun fact for you. Many people think that white
(09:32):
wine is produced from green grapes and red wine is produced
from red red grapes. But there are many white wines
that are actually made from red grapes.
Pinot Grigio is a very good example of this.
You literally just limit the contact with the skin that you
have during the process, the longer it's in contact with the
skin. The redder it gets, the redder
it. That makes sense, yeah.
Because when you bite into a grape, the inside is like a
(09:53):
whitish clear color. Yeah, so you.
Doesn't matter whether it's a red grape or a green grape.
So you can make white wine from red grape.
Obviously you can't make red wine from green grapes, though.
You can make orange wine from green grapes.
Found that out too. Interesting.
Basically, if you make it the same way you make a red wine,
you let it contact the skin a bunch, it turns like an.
Orange color? How about that?
(10:15):
Never had one of those, but. I don't think I have either I.
Don't think I've seen them. I've seen them.
I just don't know. I don't know.
Never had it so as the years came on, though, not only other
colors of wine were invented, but different styles.
Sparkling wines became popular. Maybe, you know, out of the
(10:36):
Champagne region in France in the 1600s, when a French monk by
the name of Dom Perignon. Now you, you think all the you
think all the rappers know when they're rapping about Dom
Perignon that it was just, it was some old French monk in the
1600s. They don't.
I don't think that they do. Well, it was because I did not
(10:56):
know. I knew what Dom Perignon was,
but I did not know that it was from a monk in the 1600s.
It's named after the dude, whichis great.
That's very interesting. And he made some key
contributions to the production of Sparkling Champagne by trying
to end it. Yes, the Champagne region sits
quite north in latitude, so it'spretty cold in the winter there
(11:18):
as compared to some of the otherareas in France where they grow
grapes. So this caused the bottles to
stop fermenting in the winter because it got too cold for the
east. And then they'd start back up
again in the spring. And this RE fermentation would
build up so much carbon dioxide from the fermentation process in
the bottles that they would explode and then if one exploded
(11:40):
it. Would cause all.
Of the others to explode. So he was trying at first to
stop this re fermentation process.
So he adjusted the grape blend in sparkling Champagne to reduce
the effect, and it actually madeit more popular.
As an backfired. As an export to England, the
(12:00):
English people were like I, we love the bubbles.
Can I put in? The keep those bubbles in there.
So they did. That being said, Dom Perignon is
actually credited with discovering sparkling wines and
discovering sparkling Champagne,neither of which did he do.
Yeah, he just made changes that might have helped popularize it.
(12:23):
Today, though, the most famous wines in the world are made in
pretty much California, Italy and France.
Some in Argentina if you're a Malbec fan.
Shoot, there are some from Australia as well.
Yeah, you know, there's some, but the main players are.
(12:43):
Yeah. No, there are those three, yeah.
California, France and Italy. And in 2023 in the US, $107
billion worth of wine were sold,amounting to a total volume of
just under 900 million gallons. To put that into perspective,
that's 1363 Olympic swimming pools, 3.4 billion one liter
(13:04):
bottles, and I'm just going to assume, probably enough to
convince me that I can actually hit that high note and dream on
at karaoke. You can kashawn.
Just give me 1300 swimming poolsof wine and maybe I'll do it.
But just like Pedro Pascal, wineonly gets better as it ages.
I know that's right. Like cheese?
You're really pigeonholing the cheese.
(13:25):
You just want to talk about cheese so much.
Do a cheese episode then. Oh, that's an idea.
Oh. Man, I didn't.
You're going to do it. I'm going to do it.
I'm going to find a cheese scandal.
There's one out there. There's a standard for.
Everything. And because it gets better as an
Aegis, it also gets more expensive, which means there is
(13:47):
a huge market for vintage wine sold to snobby wealthy people,
which also means a ripe opportunity to RIP them off.
So for our first, the place thatwe're heading to is we're
heading to Italy, more specifically the Tuscany region
(14:07):
to talk about something called Brunello Gate.
Brunello. Gate.
Brunello Gate. Yeah, it's really inventive.
Supposedly it was actually namedoff of a 1990s Italian political
corruption scandal. Which honestly, doing the
research for this, I was like, that's gonna be a future
(14:27):
episode. Cheers.
Cheers. No.
I don't hear this. Way.
Oh, that's really dry. It is quite dry.
And very astringent. I think that this would taste
good with pasta. Probably.
(14:50):
So we'll be sipping on this as we talk about Brunello Gate.
In Italy, there's an area known as the Tuscan wine region where
this wine is from. And kind of like, it's kind of
like Napa Valley in California, where many notable wines come
from. Italy, much like France, holds
laws that protect classifications on wines based
(15:12):
on the region that they are grown, Like how Champagne can
legally only come from the Champagne region of France.
Otherwise, it's Prosecco. Or sparkling wine and the grapes
used to make the wine. And these are called the DOCG
Regulations, based off of the very Italian name for the
governing body that controls those regulations.
(15:33):
The DOCG regulations are stricter though than French laws
when it comes to grape purity, where the French say that in
order to label a wine a certain style, it must be composed of at
least 75% that style of grape. Oh, interesting.
Italian laws say it must be 100%that kind of grape.
(15:54):
It's got to be pure. Yes.
So if you're calling it a Pinot noir, it's got to be 100% Pinot
noir grapes. This strict regulation is what
made Brunello de Montalcino widely regarded as one of the
best red wines in the world. Made from 100% Sanguveze grapes,
(16:18):
Brunello is known for having a very strong, astringent flavor
when it is young in age, which means it can sit around in a
cellar for a long time and supposedly get nothing but
better. It's got a very strong, very
acquired taste, so you can leaveit in the bottle for.
A long time. 5070 years and it'snot going to go necessary.
It's not going to lose the flavor, it's just going to get
(16:39):
more milds or whatever. I don't think I've ever had wine
like older than five years. And you think I have?
I don't. I don't.
I think I'd be afraid to drink it.
Yeah. It's not super good.
I'm not going to do. Not like.
It just kept getting drier. Fun fact, I got both of these
(17:01):
wines from my just local shitty like store that's right next to
my house. So I just kind of got whatever I
could. And yeah, this is not.
This is not good. Yeah, don't get that one.
We did not get Brunello because Brunello is expensive.
Rimolay. Don't get rimolay remolay.
(17:21):
It's Italian. I don't know.
Rimmelay. So this also meant that it has
Brunello because it can age for so long.
It does age for so long. It has the longest aging
regulation of any wine in Italy,as it must be aged for at least
four years before sale. That's kind of crazy.
Which a whole presidential term.Yeah, that's how long it has to
(17:43):
be aged. And two of that has to be in
wood, has to be in barrels and then the other two can be in
bottles. And if it's aged for those four
years and immediate released, the wineries that release it
turn them normale. But if it's aged for an extra
year, they term it Reserva. So some slight difference there,
(18:04):
right? This tight regulation of grape
content and aging means that theprice of a bottle of Brunello,
largely grown around the villageof Montalcino ranges anywhere
from $50 on the low end to $300.00 on the high end, with
special vintages obviously worthmuch more than that.
These are like the normally and the Reserve like releases can
(18:25):
range up to. Three, I cannot even imagine
paying that much for wine. That is insane.
I think I spent $40 on a bottle of wine once and was so
unimpressed that I was like, I will never do this again.
I'm not going to lie. I, I mean, if you come on Snoop
Dogg Kelly red, I challenge you to bring me a better red blend.
I get the. One I challenge you.
I get boda box bro like in the. Box Oh boda box is so good.
(18:47):
They rock and watch it. What a great deal.
What? What are they all?
I'm so old. Jesus I drank a lot of boda box
during the pandemic. In 2008, it was released to the
public that some producers of Brunello di Montalcino might
have been lying about their blood of the gods and could have
been mixing in cheaper grapes that allowed the wine to be
(19:11):
palatable at younger ages. And I don't mean by 13 year
olds, I mean the younger age of the wine, because the only wine
palatable at 13 years old is Franzi Achillabu red.
Hey, don't shit on Franzia Achillabu Red.
It's very slap the bag, baby. It's very.
Sweet. We've all played slap the bag.
You're 13, that's what you're going for.
(19:33):
So this mixing in of subpar grapes caused the wine to appear
darker than the polished Ruby color commonly associated with
Sangiovese wines, and also caused them to have more
sweetness and less complex flavors, whatever that means.
All of which was called out by sommeliers and finally let the
(19:53):
authorities in Italy quarantining the vineyards of
popular producers and seizing hundreds of thousands of bottles
of wine after they tested to notbe pure senghi of Eze grapes in
there. You know, authorities discovered
that the vineyards had indeed been mixing in multiple other
grapes to the wines like Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon and 17
(20:16):
people. So one time when I was dating
that one person that we both know, he was like, I got us some
wine tonight and I was like, Oh yeah, what did you get?
And he's like, it's actually 2 wines in one bottle.
It's Cabernet and Sauvignon. And then I laughed in his face.
(20:42):
That is hilarious. I was like, he's like, I was
like, you're dumb. You're like, oh, so it's cheap.
That guy didn't have a whole lotof money, and you know what?
I liked him anyway. You wear that as a badge of
honor. What does that mean?
I do, I was a St. Well, great for you.
(21:04):
Not great for the 17 people thatwere indicted in the scandal
that would become known as Brunello Game.
They indicted 17 people. Just 'cause they were.
Mixing that, they take it seriously.
They do. This is not a joke all.
Right. Eleven of those indicted agreed
to a plea deal which allowed them to sell their products with
(21:24):
different labels at greatly reduced prices.
Obviously to avoid trial they couldn't sell it as Brunello
sell it as a blend, but you can still sell it.
Of the six that went to trial, five were found guilty and
although I could not find details about sentencing, the
charges centering around production of a fraudulent
(21:45):
product held a maximum sentence of up to six years in prison for
each of them. Wow.
I'm sure they didn't get six years in prison, but they
could've. They could've.
All right. And here in America, the US
government actually decided to block imports of Brunello unless
each shipment was accompanied with lab results that proved the
pure it's purity of grape. I'm sorry, I just feel like we
(22:09):
have bigger issues in the world right now than the.
Someone's in charge of imports in the government, it's their
job. No, I know.
I just feel like the purity of the grape, I mean, come on, the
purity of the wine, is that the biggest problem we have right
now? But in 2008 is a different time.
Well, you're charging $300.00 a bottle for.
It Well, that's true. You are charging a lot of money.
(22:30):
I'm upset. Yeah, if I'm not getting what I
paid for. You know, and that put pressure
on Italian wine makers to fix the issue in the future.
And since 2008 there have been no more scandals associated with
this Tuscan acquired taste. Not this one.
This is a fake one. Chug chug I.
Got to say, I got to. I got to.
(22:50):
You poured yourself a pretty bigglass considering you didn't
know what it tasted like. I it's going to stay at my
house, so I'm probably going to drink it at some point anyway.
Yeah, You know, I also did not eat dinner.
Oh great, because Sean's gettingdrunk.
So I'm about to get 2 glasses ofwine into this episode and I
have not eaten. So for the next the next
(23:11):
appellation, which is the term for a place where wine has
grown. Really.
Yes. We are.
Traveling. Why do we call it Appalachia
then? No, that's Appalachia.
I know, but because. It's the Appalachian Mountains
but I'm saying Appalachian LATION.
(23:31):
So they're spelt differently butsounds similar.
But for our next Appalachian, we're traveling to the Rhone,
the southern Rhone Valley in France.
I think this one's going to taste better.
Where is that? I don't know except for that.
It's in France. It's in France and it's called
(23:51):
the Rhone Valley and I don't know what that means either.
So if you speak French and you want to French splain to us in
the comments. We.
We. Feel free, this is a Cote
Durone. What does that mean?
Also, I don't know, this one's hella darker.
I was going to say this smells thicker.
(24:13):
It smells. Thicker.
It smells thicker. What the heck does that mean?
This it just smells thick. That's how I could tell.
Your mom's coming around the corner, bro.
Oh man, She just smells thick, you know?
What's so funny is you guys don't know what my mom looks
(24:33):
like. She's very thin.
She is that thick at all. Cheers.
Nothing thick about that woman. I like this one.
I like it better. This one's much better.
So join us as we zip our way to France.
France is the first implementer of quote UN quote wine law and
it is by far the most respected wine making country in the
(24:54):
world. I listed the top three, but
really, when it comes to it, France is seen as the best one.
They take their wine seriously. Which is why when a bulk wine
bottler, Rafael Michel, was found selling improperly labeled
wine, there was multiple years behind bars on the table for its
(25:15):
chairman, Guillaume Reichwart from the southern Rhone Valley
of France. There originates 2 wines that
are made from blends of the samegrape varieties.
One of them is the Cote's d'orone and the other is the
Schotonov du Pap. Wow, I did not know how to say
(25:37):
that. Cote d'orone, which is what
we're sipping on right now, is your run at the mill wine.
It has vineyards and and vines and it's got those little sticks
they grow on. They grow in rows much like any
other. It grows in regular soil on
plots that are divided up into designated lines, like I said,
and that makes auto harvesting with a machine relatively easy.
(25:59):
They have like a thing that goesby and and blurs up all the
grapes from the bushes because they're in those lines.
Schaten of Depot, on the other hand, is famous for having its
grapes grown in soil covered with more French words.
Galais roulet. I'm going to say that they they
pronounce half the they pronounce half of the letters
(26:22):
and words. Yes, they do.
So I'm going to say it's very annoying.
Galais roulet or pudding stones I love.
Pudding. Which are basically a bunch of
little rocks that cover the ground that the grapevines grow
out of. They're like, bigger than
pebbles, you know, like relatively larger rocks.
(26:43):
OK. And the rocks supposedly hold in
the heat of the day throughout the night.
Which? Supposedly causes a higher sugar
content in the grapes. Delicious.
Because of this, though, the vines can't be grown in like the
lines with the little wooden stakes to keep.
(27:03):
Them in the line. They can't do that.
They just have to grow out of the rocks and that means that
the harvest of the grapes has tobe done completely by hand.
You cannot auto harvest the grapes.
That takes a long time. Correct.
And on top of that, it's actually illegal to water them.
Why? It's just part of the wine laws,
all right? Supposedly.
(27:24):
They did shut up for shut up to pop.
They were like, this is how the wine's made.
If you're going to call it this wine, it has to be made this
way. And part of the rules is that
you bet like like a fucking gremlin.
You better not get any water on them, all right?
Unless it's naturally occurring.So all the rain that waters the
(27:45):
plants has to come from, or all the water that waters the plants
has to come from rain. And new plants are not planted
very often because you got to plant them in the rocks.
It takes forever for them to grow because you can only water
them with rain. And because you don't plant new
plants very often, the plants that are producing grapes are
(28:05):
much older. So they're producing less.
Yeah. And because and because of both
of that, because you are watering them, you're not
watering them like technically, optimally, you have to rely on
rain. And because they're generally
older, they produce less grapes and a lower grape yield.
Supposedly that does make more like complex flavors.
(28:26):
Like if your vines are producingless grapes, it supposedly makes
a better wine. I don't know if that's actually
because it makes a better wine or because it makes a more
expensive wine because you're making less grapes, but
whatever. But all together, because of all
of these issues, Coach Jerone and Shatanov de Popp, which are
(28:48):
made from basically the same grapes and grown in pretty much
the same region. Shatanov de Popp is much harder
and more expensive to grow, which makes it worth much more
money. You can charge a lot more for
it, and a tax audit of Rafael and Michelle got the authorities
to investigate the dealings of the company more closely in
(29:10):
2017. And upon an investigation, they
found that the wine bottler had mislabeled 2.23 million cases of
wine over the course of three years from 2013 to 2016.
They labeled what is known as table wine, which is just like
the shitty wine. It doesn't really have a lot of
regulations. It's basically like Barefoot or
(29:31):
Menage a Trois. Whoa, what do you have?
What's wrong with Menage a trois?
It's I think it's generally seenas a shit wine.
Menage a trois is better than the ramole.
OK, you're not wrong there, but.Menage a trois delicious.
Or yellow tail. You know, there's just like
those brands of wine that are like, those are bad.
Yeah, Kim Crawford. That's not another one, but I'm
(29:53):
going to take your word for it. Those are table wines, all
right? And they labeled these as Cote
d'arown or even Shottonov Dupop.And they labeled Cote d'arown as
Shottonov Dupop. So they're basically just
slapping a new label on these? Things.
Yeah, they're just. Yeah.
It's more expensive. It's like having a bakery and
(30:15):
charging a lot of money for a bakery and you have your own
like cohos that you make and really you're just pulling them
out of the Hostess box and putting them in the display and
saying that you made them. Charging five times more for
them. Yeah.
So in response, Guillaume Reichwart and a few other
managers were taken into custodyand charged with fraud and
(30:35):
violation of tax codes. He was released on a $1.2
million bail and he denied the charges, but he faced up to two
years in prison and a $370,000 fine.
In the end, though, he got out on a technicality.
In France, in order to charge a corporation, you must charge a
(30:59):
legal representative of the company.
And they charge Reichwart, but only after he had already been
dismissed from Rafael Michelle, the distributor company, when
they should have charged the newCEO instead.
So they could no longer go afterthe company for what they did
because they didn't charge a legal representative of the
(31:22):
company because he no longer worked for them, if that makes
sense. Kind of.
It's stupid and it's bureaucratic, but it like
stopped the trial process. But it worked for him.
And as far as I can tell, the court case has just completely
stalled. But to be fair, the company felt
the heat of the scandal and theywere acquired by a large holding
company in France and their whole website domain is down and
(31:44):
no longer active. So they're like, like, it ruined
the company, but like no one ever got charged, although
someone did get indicted. Yeah.
So that was, that was France. That's all the wine we have.
And thank God 'cause I'm actually starting to feel this.
Are you? Yep, she shines a little gypsy.
(32:08):
Well I did just slam like 2 glasses of wine in like 30
minutes on an empty stomach. On an empty stomach.
So a What's Up Let's Party Story3 is the story that was supposed
to be this entire episode and I think ended up being the
shortest of all three of these. Stories.
(32:29):
So unfortunately there's almost no information about it, but
this is the story of Vintage Hallmark in the UK.
Vintage Hallmark was a wine and spirits dealer that held a shop
on Saint James Street. I hold I I say shop with
quotation marks because they didn't really have a shop there.
(32:50):
They just a. Pop up.
They they had an address there that they used, and they used it
because it's in a very affluent area of London and it made them
look good, but they didn't actually run a shop there.
And the whole thing was ran by Three Stooges directors Robin
Grove and Richard Gunter, as well as accountant David Lamb.
(33:13):
And they started pitching investment opportunities in
vintage wines and spirits for some reason, primarily to
American doctors starting in 1995.
Don't know why they targeted that demographic.
They've got money. I think they got like one.
And then he told his friends andthen they were just like, I
guess we sell to doctors in America now.
(33:35):
They told their prospective investors that their money would
buy wines or spirits that would then be resold in as little as
three months for a guaranteed profit of 40%.
That sounds good, too good to betrue.
So what was actually happening is that they were running the
(33:55):
investments as a Ponzi scheme, luring others to pay off
previous investors, and then they took it one step further to
keep the scheme going. They incorporated vintage
Hallmark in 2000 and started convincing and started
convincing investors to swap their profits from the
investments into shares of theircompany, which is obviously just
(34:19):
another nothing burger because it's all built on lies.
If they they did just ask for their money back though and they
said well no I don't want to getstock in your company.
They would instead try to convince them to roll over their
profits into another investment to avoid paying them out and
even get more money into the scam.
(34:42):
Or if that didn't work, they simply just didn't give them the
money back, which happened to like multiple people that
invested in them. Meanwhile, each of the directors
were making $1.7 million a year,900,000 lbs, and they were
skimming off. At least Richard Gunter skimmed
off £1,000,000 or roughly $1.9 million.
(35:03):
Additionally, just from the proceeds of the Ponzi scheme to
buy, he bought like, you know, fancy cars and all all the stuff
that these people normally buy when they're making a bunch of
money scamming people. But it can only last for so long
as the company went bankrupt in 2003, owing £77 million to
(35:24):
investors and accountant David Lamb.
Faced with this bankruptcy, knowing that this fraud would
come out, he actually committed suicide.
Wow. Which kind of complicated the
investigation, but Grove and Gunter were still later arrested
(35:46):
after the Serious Fraud Office conducted an investigation.
In 2010, Richard Gunter was found guilty of fraud and
sentenced to five years in prison, which actually ran
concurrently with a 4 1/2 year sentence he had already been
given in 2008. Because he was involved in a
like, they called it a copycat scheme.
(36:06):
It was the same scheme but for afrozen food company called Tahir
Tandoori Frozen Food, which if someone came to me and said we
do investments in liquor and wine, like vintage liquor and
wine, I'd believe them a little more than if you came and said
we do frozen Indian food and we can make you 40% on the dollar.
(36:27):
I'd be like. That doesn't sound right.
I want none of that, you know. That's the first good pun you've
done all episode. Thank you.
Congratulations. Thank you.
So Grove, on the other hand, he had a jury that could not reach
a verdict and was eventually acquitted.
(36:50):
Both were disqualified though, to act as a company director in
the UK until December 2021. And as far as I could tell, I
haven't heard anything from themsince this whole fiasco happened
in 2011. So.
So that was our three stories about wine.
We toured, we went to Italy, we went to France and we went to
(37:11):
the UK, which is not known for their one.
So we don't have anything from them and I wasn't going to pick.
I wonder what what do they have?Fish and chips.
Shitty beer. I shouldn't say that.
Guinness someone's going to be, but that's not in England.
It's yeah, it is from. The It's the UK, but it's.
From the UK, but this one's fromEngland.
So if we're if we're cutting hairs, then no.
What the English have like English pub ales, like
(37:34):
Bonningtons, Those are OK. Let's see so.
We've been on our tour of wines.We've learned a little bit about
wine history and so about this is what happens when you ad Lib
and you also are two glasses of wine deep.
We've learned a little about a little bit about that fuck, man,
Jesus Christ. We've learned a little bit about
the history of wine and about some of the frauds that can
(37:58):
amount from this very old spiritthat has been getting people
drunk for at least 8000 years, including me right now because
I'm not going to lie, I'm a little tipsy.
So I think it's about time to sign off from this episode.
So thank you so much for listening.
(38:19):
This has been kind of a looser. Sorry for the late audible.
This has been a looser episode than maybe what we're normally
accustomed to here, but my next?Episode.
I like it. My next episode at least is
going to be a very interesting one that's going to be very
historical and have a lot have alot of information on it.
So I feel OK that we're taking alittle palate cleanser here
(38:42):
towards the end of the season. Well, we need one after that
one. Yeah, after this Remalay, Oh my
God, I can't tell you enough. Don't buy this.
Don't buy that. But thank you so much for
listening. But if you liked what you heard
and you want to support us, thenyou can go ahead and do that for
free by leaving a review on Spotify.
Spotify hosts our videos. So if you want you wanted to see
(39:04):
the bottles, here's here's this terrible wine not to buy if you.
And here's the little bit betterwine.
Slightly better, yeah, I would drink this.
This, not this. If you wanted to see what all of
that meant in lovely 1080P, thenyou can go to Spotify or you can
go to our YouTube. Don't you mean to 40?
(39:24):
No, OK, I don't what I. Thought it was 1040P.
Are you thinking about your taxes?
It is that time of the season. 1040 easy.
Yeah, but it's 1080P for sure. Really.
OK, I've I'll bet my life on it.That's how confident I am.
You can kill me if I'm wrong. I don't.
Want to kill you? You won't have to because I'm
(39:45):
right. That's the original HD 4.
The original HD format was. 7:40.
P But then it was 1080P, there's1440 and then there's 4K which
is like 2160 by 38, whatever. I don't remember the exact
number. OK, I believe you.
I good so you can watch the videos on Spotify or you can
(40:09):
check out our YouTube, which is White Collar's Red hands.
You can also support us for freeby following our socials.
That's facebook.com/white Collars Red Hands X at white
collars pod or Instagram at white collars under score red
hands. You can also follow our TikTok
at white collars red hands. Any of those work you're going
to realize it's all white collars red hands or website.
(40:30):
Guess what? It's white collars, redhands.com
and if you. Free titties for you.
No, if you go there, it's something completely different.
Trust me. White collars, redhands.com, you
can go there. You can hit that button that
says check out our merch. If you want to spend some money
and actually drop some in our wallets, you can go ahead and go
there. Get a sweatshirt, a shirt,
(40:52):
whatever you want. It helps support the show.
God knows we need the support because I spent $38 on these
wines tonight, which, you know, podcasting doesn't make you a
lot of money, but if it made me $38, I'd be pretty happy.
You can also support us for freeby telling a friend.
(41:15):
All right, go into a bar and drink a whole bottle of Coat
Derone and over explain one of our episodes to someone there
and that that'll get him to listen.
Go well. Do that.
What am I missing? I do the socials.
I think is it. Yeah, all right.
Suggested episode. There we go.
You can e-mail us at White Collars, redhands@gmail.com to
suggest an episode that'll keep us more on track than this wine
(41:39):
fueled episode tonight. And I think with that, that's
going to be it. So thank you guys so much for
listening, and we'll see you next week on another episode of
White Collars. Red hands.
Wall Street veteran Bernard Madoff has been arrested and
charged with running a $50 billion Ponzi scheme.
Congress wants to know what caused the Enron meltdown.
And while the collective rage currently is focused on
Worldcom, Tyco CEO Dennis Koslowski was convicted of
looting hundreds of millions of dollars.
This is one of the biggest fraudcases ever.
(00:23):
Their president is a crook. Well, I'm not a crook.
Find out more on this week's episode of White Collars, Red
Hands. As long as there are rich
people, there will be frivolous things to spend money on, and a
lot of money at that. Maybe it is 10s of thousands of
(00:46):
dollars for an exclusive piece of grass where you can knock a
small ball into a small hole. Maybe it's millions of dollars
on artwork that looks like it could have been made by a
blindfolded monkey in a basementwith a hand tied behind its
back. All right, Maybe it is over
$100,000 to a porn star that youprobably had mediocre sex with
(01:08):
because your Cialis didn't kick it on time and thinking of your
daughter just didn't do the trick this time.
You know, whatever it is. Or maybe it is on bottles of
fruit mixed with mixed and infected with fungus that was
held in a damp cellar for longerthan you've been alive.
And it's the last one that we'retalking about today.
(01:29):
Wine. We already delivered you the
story of the $30 million wine fraud perpetuated by Rudy Rudy
Kerniawan. But wine fraud has been a long
time con because wine has been along time staple of humanity.
Today we delve into a palate cleanser episode to talk about
wine and a few scandals that centered around the holiest of
(01:52):
substances that still fucks you up.
You know, and then talking aboutwine so much, it's just kind of
a little cheesy, don't you think?
You're going with a pun, you're doing cheese puns to start off.
I think we've done cheese puns before.
Old material. That's hack.
It's pretty American of US if you can think of it.
(02:13):
Do I know do? I do you not.
Do you not appreciate my craft? Cheese.
American cheese, that's. A That took me a long time.
It did. That took me a long time.
I'm embarrassed about that. The joke really aged, actually
so. We're not even talking about
cheese, is the thing. You, you're like, you're like 2°
(02:34):
of separation from what we're talking about today.
Cheese puns are easier than winepuns, and you eat cheese with
wine, so. No, I no, I get it.
Anyway, welcome back everyone. My name is Kashawn.
And I'm Nina. And this is another episode of
White Collar's Red Hands. To be very honest with you
today, the we were supposed to do a main story today.
(02:58):
And when I started doing the research for it, it was really
quick because I found everythingon the topic in like 15 minutes.
And then I was like, that's not going to do it.
Shoot. So I had to do AI do do a last
minute audible. And instead we're doing a an
aggregate episode, a compilationepisode of a couple of wine
(03:20):
scandals. And at the very beginning we're
gonna talk about the history of wine.
I'm excited. And then more than that, we
actually have do. You want me to grab the other
one? Sure.
We actually have some real wine because we're both over the age
of 21. We're both over the age of 30,
so here we are with our wine andthey're actually important to
(03:45):
today's topics. So as we get to them, we'll open
the wine and we'll taste it along with telling you the
stories. And if you would like to drink
along with us, we are drinking Cote d'orone, which is from
France, the 2023 year lot 162. That's a good year.
We're also drinking the 2023 Romole from Romole.
(04:08):
Whatever. It's from Tuscany, it's from
Italy. OK, a little bit about wine.
Are we gonna drink it? We drink it when we get to the
stories. Getting drunk has a long and
storied history that, as far as we can tell, begins somewhere
around 6000 BCE at the latest. The practice already seemed
(04:28):
prevalent across multiple regions, as casks for winemaking
have been found dating back to 6000 BCE.
The oldest was found in modern day Georgia the the country, not
the state. But similar finds have been
found in modern day Iran dating back to 5500 BCE, modern day
Persia dating back to 5000 BCE, and in modern day Sicily dating
(04:51):
back to 4000 BCE. So they've been drinking wine
for a very long time. It's good.
And likely the process of makingwine is much older, though since
written language was only invented in 3200 BCE, so it
predates writing. So we really don't have a record
of the first people who left grapes forgotten in closet, nor
(05:13):
whoever had the bright idea to still try some, only to realize
it made their local villagers atleast 15% hotter after a few big
swigs. You know, I've seen Cavemen, so
I would also need to drink some wine before fornicating with a
caveman. Ooga ooga ooga ooga.
That's I agree. 8000 years ago in Georgia, grapes were
(05:35):
cultivated and smashed, then left to ferment in big clay
vessels known as cavevery. That is my I would love to do
that for a date. Go make wine, like stomp on the
grapes. Yeah, I would love to do that.
So I was watching a documentary about about wines and one of the
the wineries don't stomp on the grapes anymore, but they built a
(05:57):
whole machine that fake stomps on the grapes.
Like, they built like little little.
They're not. They're not shaped like feet,
but they said they're like feet at the bottom and they go in and
out and they even heated them upto body temperature.
Like. If someone's legs were going in
and out because for some reason they thought that would have an
effect on the chemistry it. Probably does, probably does.
(06:19):
Why wouldn't it? They said they tried other
methods and then it didn't turn out the same so they had to
build this whole new contraptionto fake stomp grapes.
I believe it. So obviously that's much more
fancy than what they had 6000 BCE in Georgia when they had
their cavevery. So back then it was unfiltered,
fermented with just wild yeast that grew on the grapes and not
(06:42):
like hand selected yeast strainsand likely not super strong.
So all of this to say, it almostdefinitely tasted like shit.
Like it was really bad comparatively to what we have
now. That being said, through the
years wine became a very important player in lifestyle
and culture, especially through religion.
Obviously we know that wine takes a prominent place in
(07:03):
Jewish and Christian faiths in many practices such as the
sacrament, which is why little Catholic children get to turn up
on Sunday. Hell yeah.
Nothing I love better than beingfed alcoholic spirits from a
chalice by a much older men and it's even better.
Everyone else has also drank outof.
And it's even better when it's at church.
(07:24):
Hey, it's blessed. But this idea of wine being
associated with blood is traced all the way back to the ancient
Egyptians who called it the blood of the gods also shows
they were primarily drinking redback then.
So don't worry though, polytheistic people loved wine
so much that they usually had a God just for it.
(07:46):
The Greeks had Dionysius, the God of wine, fertility and
revelry. Also a theater by the way.
And the festival of Dionysius was probably akin to a before
Christ ditty party with how crazy it.
Got Yeah, I would believe that. The Norse on the other hand
loved wine so much that they made their like main guy Odin,
(08:06):
the God of wine and alcohol. So very central.
But I mean, when your life is literally living in the cold and
pillaging villages all the time,you're probably going to put
wine on a pedestal. I.
Mean they also had a lack of funback then.
So I mean, all you really had for fun was like drinking and
sex. Yeah, life was.
So yeah, it makes sense that they had all these gods that
(08:27):
celebrated those things. You died.
Yeah, literally at like 40. All your kids died early.
All of them. You had eight and maybe 2 made
it. Yeah.
So yeah, might as well get drunk, right?
Hell yeah, brother. Everyone was an alcoholic,
basically. That's what we're saying.
And not to be left out, religions of the Eastern world
also celebrate wine. The Hindu goddess Varuni is the
(08:50):
God of wine, and then the Chinese have a goddess Yidi,
who's also the God of wine. So they all kind of got one I.
Didn't know that the that China had gods and goddesses.
Yeah, there's, there's folk godsand goddesses.
Fun fact, the depiction of the Buddha, the fat guy that you see
that is actually a Chinese folk God that they adopted into
(09:11):
Chinese Buddhism, which is why he did not know that the
original Buddha very skinny because he's an ascetic monk, so
he didn't really eat a lot. Yeah, so.
The fat one's more fun. And back in the day, wine didn't
have a lot of variation as it was once again largely believed
to be red. Which by the way, another wine
fun fact for you. Many people think that white
(09:32):
wine is produced from green grapes and red wine is produced
from red red grapes. But there are many white wines
that are actually made from red grapes.
Pinot Grigio is a very good example of this.
You literally just limit the contact with the skin that you
have during the process, the longer it's in contact with the
skin. The redder it gets, the redder
it. That makes sense, yeah.
Because when you bite into a grape, the inside is like a
(09:53):
whitish clear color. Yeah, so you.
Doesn't matter whether it's a red grape or a green grape.
So you can make white wine from red grape.
Obviously you can't make red wine from green grapes, though.
You can make orange wine from green grapes.
Found that out too. Interesting.
Basically, if you make it the same way you make a red wine,
you let it contact the skin a bunch, it turns like an.
Orange color? How about that?
(10:15):
Never had one of those, but. I don't think I have either I.
Don't think I've seen them. I've seen them.
I just don't know. I don't know.
Never had it so as the years came on, though, not only other
colors of wine were invented, but different styles.
Sparkling wines became popular. Maybe, you know, out of the
(10:36):
Champagne region in France in the 1600s, when a French monk by
the name of Dom Perignon. Now you, you think all the you
think all the rappers know when they're rapping about Dom
Perignon that it was just, it was some old French monk in the
1600s. They don't.
I don't think that they do. Well, it was because I did not
(10:56):
know. I knew what Dom Perignon was,
but I did not know that it was from a monk in the 1600s.
It's named after the dude, whichis great.
That's very interesting. And he made some key
contributions to the production of Sparkling Champagne by trying
to end it. Yes, the Champagne region sits
quite north in latitude, so it'spretty cold in the winter there
(11:18):
as compared to some of the otherareas in France where they grow
grapes. So this caused the bottles to
stop fermenting in the winter because it got too cold for the
east. And then they'd start back up
again in the spring. And this RE fermentation would
build up so much carbon dioxide from the fermentation process in
the bottles that they would explode and then if one exploded
(11:40):
it. Would cause all.
Of the others to explode. So he was trying at first to
stop this re fermentation process.
So he adjusted the grape blend in sparkling Champagne to reduce
the effect, and it actually madeit more popular.
As an backfired. As an export to England, the
(12:00):
English people were like I, we love the bubbles.
Can I put in? The keep those bubbles in there.
So they did. That being said, Dom Perignon is
actually credited with discovering sparkling wines and
discovering sparkling Champagne,neither of which did he do.
Yeah, he just made changes that might have helped popularize it.
(12:23):
Today, though, the most famous wines in the world are made in
pretty much California, Italy and France.
Some in Argentina if you're a Malbec fan.
Shoot, there are some from Australia as well.
Yeah, you know, there's some, but the main players are.
(12:43):
Yeah. No, there are those three, yeah.
California, France and Italy. And in 2023 in the US, $107
billion worth of wine were sold,amounting to a total volume of
just under 900 million gallons. To put that into perspective,
that's 1363 Olympic swimming pools, 3.4 billion one liter
(13:04):
bottles, and I'm just going to assume, probably enough to
convince me that I can actually hit that high note and dream on
at karaoke. You can kashawn.
Just give me 1300 swimming poolsof wine and maybe I'll do it.
But just like Pedro Pascal, wineonly gets better as it ages.
I know that's right. Like cheese?
You're really pigeonholing the cheese.
(13:25):
You just want to talk about cheese so much.
Do a cheese episode then. Oh, that's an idea.
Oh. Man, I didn't.
You're going to do it. I'm going to do it.
I'm going to find a cheese scandal.
There's one out there. There's a standard for.
Everything. And because it gets better as an
Aegis, it also gets more expensive, which means there is
(13:47):
a huge market for vintage wine sold to snobby wealthy people,
which also means a ripe opportunity to RIP them off.
So for our first, the place thatwe're heading to is we're
heading to Italy, more specifically the Tuscany region
(14:07):
to talk about something called Brunello Gate.
Brunello. Gate.
Brunello Gate. Yeah, it's really inventive.
Supposedly it was actually namedoff of a 1990s Italian political
corruption scandal. Which honestly, doing the
research for this, I was like, that's gonna be a future
(14:27):
episode. Cheers.
Cheers. No.
I don't hear this. Way.
Oh, that's really dry. It is quite dry.
And very astringent. I think that this would taste
good with pasta. Probably.
(14:50):
So we'll be sipping on this as we talk about Brunello Gate.
In Italy, there's an area known as the Tuscan wine region where
this wine is from. And kind of like, it's kind of
like Napa Valley in California, where many notable wines come
from. Italy, much like France, holds
laws that protect classifications on wines based
(15:12):
on the region that they are grown, Like how Champagne can
legally only come from the Champagne region of France.
Otherwise, it's Prosecco. Or sparkling wine and the grapes
used to make the wine. And these are called the DOCG
Regulations, based off of the very Italian name for the
governing body that controls those regulations.
(15:33):
The DOCG regulations are stricter though than French laws
when it comes to grape purity, where the French say that in
order to label a wine a certain style, it must be composed of at
least 75% that style of grape. Oh, interesting.
Italian laws say it must be 100%that kind of grape.
(15:54):
It's got to be pure. Yes.
So if you're calling it a Pinot noir, it's got to be 100% Pinot
noir grapes. This strict regulation is what
made Brunello de Montalcino widely regarded as one of the
best red wines in the world. Made from 100% Sanguveze grapes,
(16:18):
Brunello is known for having a very strong, astringent flavor
when it is young in age, which means it can sit around in a
cellar for a long time and supposedly get nothing but
better. It's got a very strong, very
acquired taste, so you can leaveit in the bottle for.
A long time. 5070 years and it'snot going to go necessary.
It's not going to lose the flavor, it's just going to get
(16:39):
more milds or whatever. I don't think I've ever had wine
like older than five years. And you think I have?
I don't. I don't.
I think I'd be afraid to drink it.
Yeah. It's not super good.
I'm not going to do. Not like.
It just kept getting drier. Fun fact, I got both of these
(17:01):
wines from my just local shitty like store that's right next to
my house. So I just kind of got whatever I
could. And yeah, this is not.
This is not good. Yeah, don't get that one.
We did not get Brunello because Brunello is expensive.
Rimolay. Don't get rimolay remolay.
(17:21):
It's Italian. I don't know.
Rimmelay. So this also meant that it has
Brunello because it can age for so long.
It does age for so long. It has the longest aging
regulation of any wine in Italy,as it must be aged for at least
four years before sale. That's kind of crazy.
Which a whole presidential term.Yeah, that's how long it has to
(17:43):
be aged. And two of that has to be in
wood, has to be in barrels and then the other two can be in
bottles. And if it's aged for those four
years and immediate released, the wineries that release it
turn them normale. But if it's aged for an extra
year, they term it Reserva. So some slight difference there,
(18:04):
right? This tight regulation of grape
content and aging means that theprice of a bottle of Brunello,
largely grown around the villageof Montalcino ranges anywhere
from $50 on the low end to $300.00 on the high end, with
special vintages obviously worthmuch more than that.
These are like the normally and the Reserve like releases can
(18:25):
range up to. Three, I cannot even imagine
paying that much for wine. That is insane.
I think I spent $40 on a bottle of wine once and was so
unimpressed that I was like, I will never do this again.
I'm not going to lie. I, I mean, if you come on Snoop
Dogg Kelly red, I challenge you to bring me a better red blend.
I get the. One I challenge you.
I get boda box bro like in the. Box Oh boda box is so good.
(18:47):
They rock and watch it. What a great deal.
What? What are they all?
I'm so old. Jesus I drank a lot of boda box
during the pandemic. In 2008, it was released to the
public that some producers of Brunello di Montalcino might
have been lying about their blood of the gods and could have
been mixing in cheaper grapes that allowed the wine to be
(19:11):
palatable at younger ages. And I don't mean by 13 year
olds, I mean the younger age of the wine, because the only wine
palatable at 13 years old is Franzi Achillabu red.
Hey, don't shit on Franzia Achillabu Red.
It's very slap the bag, baby. It's very.
Sweet. We've all played slap the bag.
You're 13, that's what you're going for.
(19:33):
So this mixing in of subpar grapes caused the wine to appear
darker than the polished Ruby color commonly associated with
Sangiovese wines, and also caused them to have more
sweetness and less complex flavors, whatever that means.
All of which was called out by sommeliers and finally let the
(19:53):
authorities in Italy quarantining the vineyards of
popular producers and seizing hundreds of thousands of bottles
of wine after they tested to notbe pure senghi of Eze grapes in
there. You know, authorities discovered
that the vineyards had indeed been mixing in multiple other
grapes to the wines like Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon and 17
(20:16):
people. So one time when I was dating
that one person that we both know, he was like, I got us some
wine tonight and I was like, Oh yeah, what did you get?
And he's like, it's actually 2 wines in one bottle.
It's Cabernet and Sauvignon. And then I laughed in his face.
(20:42):
That is hilarious. I was like, he's like, I was
like, you're dumb. You're like, oh, so it's cheap.
That guy didn't have a whole lotof money, and you know what?
I liked him anyway. You wear that as a badge of
honor. What does that mean?
I do, I was a St. Well, great for you.
(21:04):
Not great for the 17 people thatwere indicted in the scandal
that would become known as Brunello Game.
They indicted 17 people. Just 'cause they were.
Mixing that, they take it seriously.
They do. This is not a joke all.
Right. Eleven of those indicted agreed
to a plea deal which allowed them to sell their products with
(21:24):
different labels at greatly reduced prices.
Obviously to avoid trial they couldn't sell it as Brunello
sell it as a blend, but you can still sell it.
Of the six that went to trial, five were found guilty and
although I could not find details about sentencing, the
charges centering around production of a fraudulent
(21:45):
product held a maximum sentence of up to six years in prison for
each of them. Wow.
I'm sure they didn't get six years in prison, but they
could've. They could've.
All right. And here in America, the US
government actually decided to block imports of Brunello unless
each shipment was accompanied with lab results that proved the
pure it's purity of grape. I'm sorry, I just feel like we
(22:09):
have bigger issues in the world right now than the.
Someone's in charge of imports in the government, it's their
job. No, I know.
I just feel like the purity of the grape, I mean, come on, the
purity of the wine, is that the biggest problem we have right
now? But in 2008 is a different time.
Well, you're charging $300.00 a bottle for.
It Well, that's true. You are charging a lot of money.
(22:30):
I'm upset. Yeah, if I'm not getting what I
paid for. You know, and that put pressure
on Italian wine makers to fix the issue in the future.
And since 2008 there have been no more scandals associated with
this Tuscan acquired taste. Not this one.
This is a fake one. Chug chug I.
Got to say, I got to. I got to.
(22:50):
You poured yourself a pretty bigglass considering you didn't
know what it tasted like. I it's going to stay at my
house, so I'm probably going to drink it at some point anyway.
Yeah, You know, I also did not eat dinner.
Oh great, because Sean's gettingdrunk.
So I'm about to get 2 glasses ofwine into this episode and I
have not eaten. So for the next the next
(23:11):
appellation, which is the term for a place where wine has
grown. Really.
Yes. We are.
Traveling. Why do we call it Appalachia
then? No, that's Appalachia.
I know, but because. It's the Appalachian Mountains
but I'm saying Appalachian LATION.
(23:31):
So they're spelt differently butsounds similar.
But for our next Appalachian, we're traveling to the Rhone,
the southern Rhone Valley in France.
I think this one's going to taste better.
Where is that? I don't know except for that.
It's in France. It's in France and it's called
(23:51):
the Rhone Valley and I don't know what that means either.
So if you speak French and you want to French splain to us in
the comments. We.
We. Feel free, this is a Cote
Durone. What does that mean?
Also, I don't know, this one's hella darker.
I was going to say this smells thicker.
(24:13):
It smells. Thicker.
It smells thicker. What the heck does that mean?
This it just smells thick. That's how I could tell.
Your mom's coming around the corner, bro.
Oh man, She just smells thick, you know?
What's so funny is you guys don't know what my mom looks
(24:33):
like. She's very thin.
She is that thick at all. Cheers.
Nothing thick about that woman. I like this one.
I like it better. This one's much better.
So join us as we zip our way to France.
France is the first implementer of quote UN quote wine law and
it is by far the most respected wine making country in the
(24:54):
world. I listed the top three, but
really, when it comes to it, France is seen as the best one.
They take their wine seriously. Which is why when a bulk wine
bottler, Rafael Michel, was found selling improperly labeled
wine, there was multiple years behind bars on the table for its
(25:15):
chairman, Guillaume Reichwart from the southern Rhone Valley
of France. There originates 2 wines that
are made from blends of the samegrape varieties.
One of them is the Cote's d'orone and the other is the
Schotonov du Pap. Wow, I did not know how to say
(25:37):
that. Cote d'orone, which is what
we're sipping on right now, is your run at the mill wine.
It has vineyards and and vines and it's got those little sticks
they grow on. They grow in rows much like any
other. It grows in regular soil on
plots that are divided up into designated lines, like I said,
and that makes auto harvesting with a machine relatively easy.
(25:59):
They have like a thing that goesby and and blurs up all the
grapes from the bushes because they're in those lines.
Schaten of Depot, on the other hand, is famous for having its
grapes grown in soil covered with more French words.
Galais roulet. I'm going to say that they they
pronounce half the they pronounce half of the letters
(26:22):
and words. Yes, they do.
So I'm going to say it's very annoying.
Galais roulet or pudding stones I love.
Pudding. Which are basically a bunch of
little rocks that cover the ground that the grapevines grow
out of. They're like, bigger than
pebbles, you know, like relatively larger rocks.
(26:43):
OK. And the rocks supposedly hold in
the heat of the day throughout the night.
Which? Supposedly causes a higher sugar
content in the grapes. Delicious.
Because of this, though, the vines can't be grown in like the
lines with the little wooden stakes to keep.
(27:03):
Them in the line. They can't do that.
They just have to grow out of the rocks and that means that
the harvest of the grapes has tobe done completely by hand.
You cannot auto harvest the grapes.
That takes a long time. Correct.
And on top of that, it's actually illegal to water them.
Why? It's just part of the wine laws,
all right? Supposedly.
(27:24):
They did shut up for shut up to pop.
They were like, this is how the wine's made.
If you're going to call it this wine, it has to be made this
way. And part of the rules is that
you bet like like a fucking gremlin.
You better not get any water on them, all right?
Unless it's naturally occurring.So all the rain that waters the
(27:45):
plants has to come from, or all the water that waters the plants
has to come from rain. And new plants are not planted
very often because you got to plant them in the rocks.
It takes forever for them to grow because you can only water
them with rain. And because you don't plant new
plants very often, the plants that are producing grapes are
(28:05):
much older. So they're producing less.
Yeah. And because and because of both
of that, because you are watering them, you're not
watering them like technically, optimally, you have to rely on
rain. And because they're generally
older, they produce less grapes and a lower grape yield.
Supposedly that does make more like complex flavors.
(28:26):
Like if your vines are producingless grapes, it supposedly makes
a better wine. I don't know if that's actually
because it makes a better wine or because it makes a more
expensive wine because you're making less grapes, but
whatever. But all together, because of all
of these issues, Coach Jerone and Shatanov de Popp, which are
(28:48):
made from basically the same grapes and grown in pretty much
the same region. Shatanov de Popp is much harder
and more expensive to grow, which makes it worth much more
money. You can charge a lot more for
it, and a tax audit of Rafael and Michelle got the authorities
to investigate the dealings of the company more closely in
(29:10):
2017. And upon an investigation, they
found that the wine bottler had mislabeled 2.23 million cases of
wine over the course of three years from 2013 to 2016.
They labeled what is known as table wine, which is just like
the shitty wine. It doesn't really have a lot of
regulations. It's basically like Barefoot or
(29:31):
Menage a Trois. Whoa, what do you have?
What's wrong with Menage a trois?
It's I think it's generally seenas a shit wine.
Menage a trois is better than the ramole.
OK, you're not wrong there, but.Menage a trois delicious.
Or yellow tail. You know, there's just like
those brands of wine that are like, those are bad.
Yeah, Kim Crawford. That's not another one, but I'm
(29:53):
going to take your word for it. Those are table wines, all
right? And they labeled these as Cote
d'arown or even Shottonov Dupop.And they labeled Cote d'arown as
Shottonov Dupop. So they're basically just
slapping a new label on these? Things.
Yeah, they're just. Yeah.
It's more expensive. It's like having a bakery and
(30:15):
charging a lot of money for a bakery and you have your own
like cohos that you make and really you're just pulling them
out of the Hostess box and putting them in the display and
saying that you made them. Charging five times more for
them. Yeah.
So in response, Guillaume Reichwart and a few other
managers were taken into custodyand charged with fraud and
(30:35):
violation of tax codes. He was released on a $1.2
million bail and he denied the charges, but he faced up to two
years in prison and a $370,000 fine.
In the end, though, he got out on a technicality.
In France, in order to charge a corporation, you must charge a
(30:59):
legal representative of the company.
And they charge Reichwart, but only after he had already been
dismissed from Rafael Michelle, the distributor company, when
they should have charged the newCEO instead.
So they could no longer go afterthe company for what they did
because they didn't charge a legal representative of the
(31:22):
company because he no longer worked for them, if that makes
sense. Kind of.
It's stupid and it's bureaucratic, but it like
stopped the trial process. But it worked for him.
And as far as I can tell, the court case has just completely
stalled. But to be fair, the company felt
the heat of the scandal and theywere acquired by a large holding
company in France and their whole website domain is down and
(31:44):
no longer active. So they're like, like, it ruined
the company, but like no one ever got charged, although
someone did get indicted. Yeah.
So that was, that was France. That's all the wine we have.
And thank God 'cause I'm actually starting to feel this.
Are you? Yep, she shines a little gypsy.
(32:08):
Well I did just slam like 2 glasses of wine in like 30
minutes on an empty stomach. On an empty stomach.
So a What's Up Let's Party Story3 is the story that was supposed
to be this entire episode and I think ended up being the
shortest of all three of these. Stories.
(32:29):
So unfortunately there's almost no information about it, but
this is the story of Vintage Hallmark in the UK.
Vintage Hallmark was a wine and spirits dealer that held a shop
on Saint James Street. I hold I I say shop with
quotation marks because they didn't really have a shop there.
(32:50):
They just a. Pop up.
They they had an address there that they used, and they used it
because it's in a very affluent area of London and it made them
look good, but they didn't actually run a shop there.
And the whole thing was ran by Three Stooges directors Robin
Grove and Richard Gunter, as well as accountant David Lamb.
(33:13):
And they started pitching investment opportunities in
vintage wines and spirits for some reason, primarily to
American doctors starting in 1995.
Don't know why they targeted that demographic.
They've got money. I think they got like one.
And then he told his friends andthen they were just like, I
guess we sell to doctors in America now.
(33:35):
They told their prospective investors that their money would
buy wines or spirits that would then be resold in as little as
three months for a guaranteed profit of 40%.
That sounds good, too good to betrue.
So what was actually happening is that they were running the
(33:55):
investments as a Ponzi scheme, luring others to pay off
previous investors, and then they took it one step further to
keep the scheme going. They incorporated vintage
Hallmark in 2000 and started convincing and started
convincing investors to swap their profits from the
investments into shares of theircompany, which is obviously just
(34:19):
another nothing burger because it's all built on lies.
If they they did just ask for their money back though and they
said well no I don't want to getstock in your company.
They would instead try to convince them to roll over their
profits into another investment to avoid paying them out and
even get more money into the scam.
(34:42):
Or if that didn't work, they simply just didn't give them the
money back, which happened to like multiple people that
invested in them. Meanwhile, each of the directors
were making $1.7 million a year,900,000 lbs, and they were
skimming off. At least Richard Gunter skimmed
off £1,000,000 or roughly $1.9 million.
(35:03):
Additionally, just from the proceeds of the Ponzi scheme to
buy, he bought like, you know, fancy cars and all all the stuff
that these people normally buy when they're making a bunch of
money scamming people. But it can only last for so long
as the company went bankrupt in 2003, owing £77 million to
(35:24):
investors and accountant David Lamb.
Faced with this bankruptcy, knowing that this fraud would
come out, he actually committed suicide.
Wow. Which kind of complicated the
investigation, but Grove and Gunter were still later arrested
(35:46):
after the Serious Fraud Office conducted an investigation.
In 2010, Richard Gunter was found guilty of fraud and
sentenced to five years in prison, which actually ran
concurrently with a 4 1/2 year sentence he had already been
given in 2008. Because he was involved in a
like, they called it a copycat scheme.
(36:06):
It was the same scheme but for afrozen food company called Tahir
Tandoori Frozen Food, which if someone came to me and said we
do investments in liquor and wine, like vintage liquor and
wine, I'd believe them a little more than if you came and said
we do frozen Indian food and we can make you 40% on the dollar.
(36:27):
I'd be like. That doesn't sound right.
I want none of that, you know. That's the first good pun you've
done all episode. Thank you.
Congratulations. Thank you.
So Grove, on the other hand, he had a jury that could not reach
a verdict and was eventually acquitted.
(36:50):
Both were disqualified though, to act as a company director in
the UK until December 2021. And as far as I could tell, I
haven't heard anything from themsince this whole fiasco happened
in 2011. So.
So that was our three stories about wine.
We toured, we went to Italy, we went to France and we went to
(37:11):
the UK, which is not known for their one.
So we don't have anything from them and I wasn't going to pick.
I wonder what what do they have?Fish and chips.
Shitty beer. I shouldn't say that.
Guinness someone's going to be, but that's not in England.
It's yeah, it is from. The It's the UK, but it's.
From the UK, but this one's fromEngland.
So if we're if we're cutting hairs, then no.
What the English have like English pub ales, like
(37:34):
Bonningtons, Those are OK. Let's see so.
We've been on our tour of wines.We've learned a little bit about
wine history and so about this is what happens when you ad Lib
and you also are two glasses of wine deep.
We've learned a little about a little bit about that fuck, man,
Jesus Christ. We've learned a little bit about
the history of wine and about some of the frauds that can
(37:58):
amount from this very old spiritthat has been getting people
drunk for at least 8000 years, including me right now because
I'm not going to lie, I'm a little tipsy.
So I think it's about time to sign off from this episode.
So thank you so much for listening.
(38:19):
This has been kind of a looser. Sorry for the late audible.
This has been a looser episode than maybe what we're normally
accustomed to here, but my next?Episode.
I like it. My next episode at least is
going to be a very interesting one that's going to be very
historical and have a lot have alot of information on it.
So I feel OK that we're taking alittle palate cleanser here
(38:42):
towards the end of the season. Well, we need one after that
one. Yeah, after this Remalay, Oh my
God, I can't tell you enough. Don't buy this.
Don't buy that. But thank you so much for
listening. But if you liked what you heard
and you want to support us, thenyou can go ahead and do that for
free by leaving a review on Spotify.
Spotify hosts our videos. So if you want you wanted to see
(39:04):
the bottles, here's here's this terrible wine not to buy if you.
And here's the little bit betterwine.
Slightly better, yeah, I would drink this.
This, not this. If you wanted to see what all of
that meant in lovely 1080P, thenyou can go to Spotify or you can
go to our YouTube. Don't you mean to 40?
(39:24):
No, OK, I don't what I. Thought it was 1040P.
Are you thinking about your taxes?
It is that time of the season. 1040 easy.
Yeah, but it's 1080P for sure. Really.
OK, I've I'll bet my life on it.That's how confident I am.
You can kill me if I'm wrong. I don't.
Want to kill you? You won't have to because I'm
(39:45):
right. That's the original HD 4.
The original HD format was. 7:40.
P But then it was 1080P, there's1440 and then there's 4K which
is like 2160 by 38, whatever. I don't remember the exact
number. OK, I believe you.
I good so you can watch the videos on Spotify or you can
(40:09):
check out our YouTube, which is White Collar's Red hands.
You can also support us for freeby following our socials.
That's facebook.com/white Collars Red Hands X at white
collars pod or Instagram at white collars under score red
hands. You can also follow our TikTok
at white collars red hands. Any of those work you're going
to realize it's all white collars red hands or website.
(40:30):
Guess what? It's white collars, redhands.com
and if you. Free titties for you.
No, if you go there, it's something completely different.
Trust me. White collars, redhands.com, you
can go there. You can hit that button that
says check out our merch. If you want to spend some money
and actually drop some in our wallets, you can go ahead and go
there. Get a sweatshirt, a shirt,
(40:52):
whatever you want. It helps support the show.
God knows we need the support because I spent $38 on these
wines tonight, which, you know, podcasting doesn't make you a
lot of money, but if it made me $38, I'd be pretty happy.
You can also support us for freeby telling a friend.
(41:15):
All right, go into a bar and drink a whole bottle of Coat
Derone and over explain one of our episodes to someone there
and that that'll get him to listen.
Go well. Do that.
What am I missing? I do the socials.
I think is it. Yeah, all right.
Suggested episode. There we go.
You can e-mail us at White Collars, redhands@gmail.com to
suggest an episode that'll keep us more on track than this wine
(41:39):
fueled episode tonight. And I think with that, that's
going to be it. So thank you guys so much for
listening, and we'll see you next week on another episode of
White Collars. Red hands.
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