Meinhard Görke, known as Hardy Rodenstock (7 December 1941 – 19 May 2018) was a German publisher and manager of pop and Schlager music, and a prominent wine collector, connoisseur, and trader, with a special interest in old and rare wines. He became famous for his allegedly uncanny ability to track down old and very rare wines, and for arranging extravagant wine tastings featuring these wines. It has been alleged that Rodenstock was the perpetrator of an elaborate wine fraud. In 1992, a German court found that Rodenstock had "knowingly offered adulterated wine" for sale. On appeal, the case was settled out of court.
Rare wine tastings From 1980, Rodenstock arranged annual high-profile wine tastings of old and rare wines from his collections to which he invited friends and other prominent people. The tastings would be weekend tastings held at gourmet restaurants, hotels, and resorts, and they featured huge quantities of wine at Rodenstock's expense. The participants included German celebrities and later, expanded to include some of the most prominent international wine critics. The most famous Rodenstock tasting was held from 30 August to 5 September 1998 at Hotel Königshof in Munich, when a tasting of 125 vintages of Château d'Yquem, the oldest of which were of the 1784 vintage, was held. Two eighteenth-century, forty nineteenth-century, and all released twentieth-century vintages of Château d'Yquem up to 1991 were featured in this vertical tasting, which was conducted over the course of a week. The events of the week included five luncheons, seven dinners, and more than 175 other wines. It is most likely the most extensive Yquem tasting to that date and it has been the subject of a book. The exclusive nature of the wine selection featured at Rodenstock's tastings is indicated by the fact that Michael Broadbent, who was considered to be the world's leading authority on old wines, had tasted many of the rarest and oldest wines at Rodenstock's tastings, in particular, most eighteenth-century wines he has tasted. Other participants at the Rodenstock tastings included Jancis Robinson, Robert M. Parker Jr., and the then-owner of Château d'Yquem, Alexandre de Lur-Saluces.
Alleged Thomas Jefferson wine bottles
Finding and sales of the bottles
Rodenstock had not just served wines at his annual tasting, but also bought and sold at wine auctions. In 1985, he came into possession of his most famous bottles, which later, have become the subject of considerable controversy as to their authenticity and provenance. According to Rodenstock's own account, in early 1985 he received a telephone call about a discovery of old wine bottles in Paris. The bottles had been found in a walled-up old cellar, and were engraved with vintage years from the late eighteenth century. This had in itself been an interesting find for a collector of old wines, but the bottles also were engraved with the initials "Th. J.", which was taken as an indication that they had belonged to Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson was an active œnophile and wine collector, who spent much time in France during the 1780s and whose interest in wine is well documented. Later the same year, on 5 December 1985, Rodenstock put one of the "Th. J." bottles up for auction at Christie's in London: a bottle of 1787 Château Lafite, engraved "1787 Lafitte Th. J.". The auction catalogue simply listed the value as "inestimable", and it was sold for 105,000 pound sterling, which as of 2007 remained the worldwide auction record for a single bottle of wine. The buyer was Christopher Forbes, bidding against Marvin Shanken of Wine Spectator Magazine, with Michael Broadbent handling the gavel at the auction. Additional "Th. J." bottles were sold, via other auction houses.
Concerns about authenticity In 2005, U.S. art and wine collector Bill Koch, who had bought some of the bottles attributed to Thomas Jefferson, prepared to exhibit items from his collection at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, including the Jefferson bottles. The museum asked for provenance of the items to be displayed. In 1988, Koch had bought four bottles of Château Lafite and Branne-Mouton (present-day Château Mouton-Rothschild) of the 1784 and 1787 vintages, at a U.S. wine auction house (Chicago Wine Company) and a UK rare wine dealer (Farr Vintners), and paid a total of about 500,000 U.S. dollars for them. When Koch's staff couldn't find anything except Michael Broadbent's authentification of the bottles to confirm their provenance, the Thomas Jefferson Foundation at Monticello, Charlottesville, Virginia was contacted. The foundation's curator replied that based on Jefferson's records, the foundation did not think that the bottles had been in the possession of Thomas Jefferson. Inquiries at Chicago Wine Company and Farr Vintners came up with the result that all four of Koch's bottles originated with Rodenstock. After initial attempts at contacts with Rodenstock gave no significant results, Koch hired a retired Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agent to form a team to start private investigations into Rodenstock's sales of wine. David Molyneux-Berry, former head of Sotheby's wine department was hired as a consultant, and several forensic investigations were conducted on the wines, bottles, and engravings; Koch alleges that the engravings were made with an electric power tool, which would not have been possible in the eighteenth century and would indicate modern forgery. On 31 August 2006 Koch filed a civil lawsuit against Rodenstock (a.k.a. Görke) in a New York federal court, claiming that he had been the victim of fraud. The reason that Rodenstock personally was named as defendant, rather than Chicago Wine Company or Farr Vintners, was that Koch claimed that Rodenstock had orchestrated an ongoing scheme to defraud wine collectors. Koch's lawsuit included many results from his team's forensic investigations. This lawsuit was then the subject of many legal turns during 2007 and 2008, primarily focused on procedural and statutory issues. A default judgment was entered against Rodenstock in May 2010. Rodenstock refused to participate in the trial.
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