Sour Grapes

Sour Grapes (2016) is a documentary from Reuben Atlas and Jerry Rothwell you can watch online on iFILM. It tells how one charming young man fooled the richest wine collectors on earth.

In the mid-2000s, American auction houses can't stop talking about Rudy Kurniawan — an Indonesian newcomer with a bottomless wallet and an uncanny palate for rare Burgundy. He sells legendary bottles for millions, gets invited to private tastings, walks through every door that matters. The catch: many of those trophy wines he blends in his own kitchen from cheap stock and forged labels. The film unwinds the scam step by step, and shows how billionaire Bill Koch and winemaker Laurent Ponsot were the first to smell something off.

Atlas and Rothwell clearly relish the telling, keeping it a hair away from comedy: the louder the experts gushed over vintages that never existed, the more absurd the con looks. It ends up being about wine and about how easily status and snobbery stand in for actual taste. The reckoning arrived just as the 2008 markets collapsed. Stream Sour Grapes (2016) online on iFILM.