The Washington Post reports on a growing problem in the vintage wine business: bogus vintage wines. Apparently many collectors who shell out thousands of dollars for a rare bottle of wine are discovering that what they bought is a fake:

"The cloud of shame over the last 10 years has been the market for counterfeit trophy wine." Sutcliffe [head of the international wine department at Sotheby's] said there was a psychological block to dealing with the problem because real vintage wine makers in Europe prefer to ignore what is going on as they are afraid of being tarnished with the same brush. "Asian (buyers) tend to ignore the problem because they don't want to lose face, but in America they are waking up to it."

Unfortunately the article doesn't discuss how people discover they've got a bogus vintage wine. Do they taste it and realize that it's plonk? Personally, I doubt I would be able to tell the difference (which is why I'm not a wine collector... though I enjoy wine).