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Sour Grapes
A cutthroat world of auction houses, hedge fund managers, FBI sleuths and organized crime opens up when millions of dollars worth of wine are discovered to have been made in a California basement with false labels slapped on. It was rumoured that Rudy Kurniawan was a wine savant: he had an expert memory for taste and was a generous host, always offering rare vintages from his vast cellar. In 2006, he made $35 million in two wine auctions from the sale of his bottles. But in 2008, a French producer realized that wine from his family’s domain was being sold from a year they hadn’t produced it. Uncorking the con’s full story, Hot Docs hit Sour Grapes shows how the super-rich were buying fine wine as if they were mortgage-backed securities before the 2008 financial crisis, and how the demands of excess and greed can make anything “real.”
Media Coverage
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