There are a few lots of the 1990 Musar (Rouge) on wined this week. I always look for the Broadbent Selections on old Musar. However, I’ve NEVER seen it listed on the front label before. It just looks all wrong. As Musar has started to gain some attention and the older bottles are harder & harder to find…provenance is everything. Looking back at some photos I’ve taken in the past it was not printed that way on any of the following vintages that I’ve had: 1980, 1981, 1984, 1986, 1988, 1989, 1993 - present. I have had the 1990, but did not bother to take a clear photo of the bottle.
As I know we’re all passionate, and many who are new to this producer in this forum may want to have the experience of an older bottle. I’m really hoping someone from Broadbent Selections may see this and comment if I’m wrong (I’m at least 99% confident that none of the bottles I’ve had from Broadbent Selections ever had it printed on the front label).
All the old Musar I’ve bought is from the UK…but hopefully the person who helped set up the chat with Marc back at the beginning of quarantine can chime in
I’d wager people will fake anything to make a buck. I laughed reading when people faked common Beanie Babies and that’s not quite an aged Leroy lol. So nothing would surprise me. Musar has a following with a consistent demand, I can see some folks testing the waters on pushing some bottles through. Sadly.
I looked for folks in the USA on Vivino who had reviewed this bottle / vintage and uploaded their own picture (you can scan for the image people upload when they review a wine by clicking on their user name). Wasn’t able to find many reviewers of this vintage in the US, but did find one and wouldn’t you know it, right there on the label:
Label looks ok to me. My '89s and '90s both have Broadbent Selections on the front label. I purchased these bottles many years ago from someone who works at Broadbent. I think I paid about $30 a bottle at the time. The ones I’ve drunk have been great!
When I was in China, I saw a pallet of Black Opal in the market among the current release dvds, and knockoff designer clothing, basically being sold by the bottle from a truck. I am sure it was fake, the label looked like a photocopy. $5 tops. 200% profit or five times what a retailer makes at full mark up.
I think the question is scale. Sure, if you can knock off huge numbers of fake beanie babies, Izod shirts or whatever, it can make money.
But if you’re selling five fake Musar bottles on winebid, that’s a lot of work and risk for three digits in gross return.
Or maybe someone faked a larger amount and one unlucky buyer is looking to get rid of his this way? Even still, it’s hard to imagine enough fake 90 Musar getting circulated to be worth risking jail and all.
And I don’t mean to slight Musar. Maybe my favorite producer in the world. But it doesn’t seem like the price + quantity would probably justify counterfeiting.
This is speculation, but sulfite warnings were required in the US from 1987. I see the warning is incorporated here in the label with Broadbent’s name. I wonder if perhaps this was the first year they commissioned labels for the US market, with both the importer and the sulfites warning. Perhaps they had used strip labels before then and tried printing them right on the main label in 1990. Just a possible explanation.
Just my opinion but I think you are overstating the risk. I believe that the ends of the spectrum both have higher risk then the scenario you lay out. A few bottles of DRC or the lime that fetch way more also gets more scrutiny. Moving thousands of bottles of fake yellow tail has a lot of risk as well. Selling a few bottles of something that cost a few hundred is most likely considered to be low risk and probably more common than we want to believe. In many ways I think it mirrors all of the cases of embezzlement, fraud, and/or bribery where people get caught for a few thousand dollars because they assumed no one would notice or care. People do really stupid things for relatively little money if they think it’s risk free.
On a less serious note, what on earth would you put in the bottle if you were counterfeiting Musar? Not sure some other wine comes to mind that could pass for it.
Not really old but these are some of my favorites from the period I was buying:
1989, 1991*, 1993, 1995**, 1997, 1999*, 2000
extra special
** of the bottles I’ve opened 4 were very good though not up to 1991 or 1999, the most recent (and last one I owned) was mind blowingly awesome.
I hear great things about 2005 and have some pending delivery but have not tried it yet.
Seems like there are 9 bottles that don’t seem to have indication as to having lower fills, but the picture for the lot seems to be below neck. What are your thoughts?
