Ten thousand bottles of fake Haut Brion, mostly 258ml

WINE TALK
1

No fine and the suspect disappeared.

Unfortunately, there’s no information in this story about the vintages, which is crucial to stop the sale of the 750mls. Most of it — more than 9,000 bottles — are 258ml (WTF?), so we won’t need Don Cornwall’s assistance in spotting those. That suggests that the counterfeiters aren’t targeting sophisticated buyers.

Note, also, there was fake Perrier-Jouet, which I’d think would be trickier to make.

Finally, note that the raid was nearly two years ago, in January 2019, but was only disclosed now.

2

258ml is such an odd bottle size. Who even makes bulk orders of bottles that size? Feels like you’d need to special order something like that.

3

It looks like it might be a standard bottle size in China.

4

Interesting. Does this mean that BDX chateaus produce wine in that format for the Chinese market instead of the standard 375ml?

5

Apparently they don’t need to :slight_smile:

6

Touche! I walked right into that one…

Still legitimately interested in learning more this 258ml bottle format, it’s the first time I’ve heard of it and I couldn’t find any much info on it

7

Keep an eye out for misspellings on the label.

8

I don’t have any info about wine. I just googled it and saw many hits for various 258ml bottles, including some liquors.

9

It’s almost as if the criminals first noticed 258ml bottles then decided to do something with them.

10

the trailing 8 might have something to do with luck in China, but I cnat think that overrules wanting to make it in an actual wine bottle format that Bordeaux would produce

11

Seem popular for dog drinks, too:
https://www.amazon.com/Multifunctional-Leak-Proof-Portable-Material-Wide-Mouth/dp/B08B16JL6Q