by
Ponsot is set to reveal more about the wine fraud that shot him to international fame. (Photo: Laurent Ponsot)
Laurent Ponsot has enjoyed more than his fair share of the limelight in the wine world. The French winemaker propelled his family’s estate Domaine Ponsot in Burgundy to iconic status while at its helm until 2017. Its 12 Grand Crus — especially those from the hallowed plots of Clos de la Roche and Clos St Denis — line the cellars of well-heeled wine connoisseurs.
Still, it was a sensational wine scandal that catapulted Ponsot to mainstream fame in 2014. Widely known as the wine world’s Sherlock Holmes, Ponsot tracked down the notorious fraudster Rudy Kurniawan for counterfeiting his wines.
Today, Ponsot is months away from publishing his tell-all, Fake Bottle Investigations, which launches globally in October. Both in English and French, the book reveals previously untold information about Kurniawan and the nefarious world of wine counterfeiting.
Speaking to The Peak on a recent visit to Singapore to launch the latest vintage of his eponymous wine label, he says of his upcoming exposé: “Everything I could not tell the tribunal because I did not get enough evidence is in the book.”
It all started in 2008, when 90 bottles of wines, including Clos St Denis 1945, were listed in the auction catalogue of wine auctioneers Acker Marrel Condit. They were valued at over US$500,000 (S$665,000), but the auction lot was fake as the domain did not produce any Grand Crus until 1982.
Credit: Grand Cru or Premier Cru bottles are fitted with technology that authenticates the wine. (Photo: Laurent Ponsot)
Ponsot hurriedly flew to New York to stop the auction and, over the next five years, tirelessly pursued Kurniawan, leading to the conviction of the smooth- talking Indonesian by a United States Federal court in 2014. Kurniawan was sentenced to 10 years in jail.
The plot was the basis of a 2016 Netflix documentary, Sour Grapes, in which Ponsot spoke about his investigation and the red herrings Kurniawan threw.
It was only when the world shut down during the pandemic that Ponsot found the time to pen his book, revealing more insights into the case, including Kurniawan’s accomplices — a point he mentioned in an interview with Wine Spectator in 2020.
When pressed for more details about the book, Ponsot remained tight-lipped. He says, “My goal is to clean the dirt this guy has made on the spirit of winemaking.”
A New Chapter of Winemaking
Credit: Grapes are left to develop naturally into wine to reflect their terroir. (Photo: Laurent Ponsot)
Before embarking on a brief detour as an author, Ponsot was already a famous winemaker in his own right. That is, until he made the shocking decision to leave his family’s 145-year-old estate to set up his own in 2017.
“My passion for wine brought me to restart. I could stop working after Domaine Ponsot, retire and have a nice life,” he reflects, “but I had in my spirit the need to go a little further.”
Speaking about the family tension that led to his departure, he says, “When you are in a family business, sometimes one person is working and the others demand more money and glory. They don’t thank you for anything.”
He retained a 25 per cent ownership of Domaine Ponsot, which he has since sold to buy equipment and grapes to launch his own label with his son Clément in 2017.
Looking back, he notes that he lost a lot of money leaving Domaine Ponsot — “but freedom has no price”.
When you are in a family business, sometimes one person is working and the others demand more money and glory. They don’t thank you for anything. – Laurent Ponsot, on why he struck out on his own
Sticking to Négociant Roots
Credit: His state-of-the-art winery took six years to set up. (Photo: Laurent Ponsot)
Over the past six years, Ponsot has established a new state-of-the-art winery in Gilly-Lès-Citeaux. His label has 27 wines — 10 whites and 17 reds — which are available locally through his Singapore importer, Wine Clique.
This time, he fashions himself as a wine merchant or négociant, which harks back to a long-standing tradition in Burgundy and Bordeaux. “The négociants would buy the barrels from winegrowers, age it, bottle it, and market it.”
He reminds us that négociants are the ones who made Burgundy famous and took pains to re-establish the glory of the négociant model, which gave way in the 1970s when estates started bottling their wines. Domaine Ponsot was one of the earliest estates to bottle wines.
Under his label, Ponsot buys grapes from 7ha spread across 27 appellations — some famous and others less so. In true négociant tradition, he blends multiple growers from the same appellation to create his wines and espouses richness in diversity.
Among the reds, appellations like Gevrey-Chambertin, Vosne-Romanée, Échezeaux, and Chambolle-Musigny are the drawcards of his portfolio. He is also making regional Bourgogne red and smaller satellites like Chambolle-Musigny Trails and Gevrey-Chambertin En Ergot.
Credit: Ponsot wines blend grapes from different growers in the same appellation. (Photo: Laurent Ponsot)
In the wine labelling nomenclature, Ponsot, in his trademark lone-wolf style, is treading a new path. “Burgundy is the only region which is 70km long, 1km wide on average, with 1,200 appellations. So, it’s already very complicated for people,” he says.
Burgundian wines are categorised by region, village, and quality level, with Grand Cru being the highest level. Over time, wine producers started adding the name of the wine-growing plot (or climat in French) to create a further difference from others.
Depending on which row the grapes are grown in, this region’s wines can differ by thousands of dollars.
Still, Ponsot is set on uncomplicating the naming process and making things more straightforward. The whites are named simply after the names of flowers and the reds after trees. Take the Vosne Romanée Cherry cuvée, a pinot noir labelled after the cherry tree. Or a white wine from Batard-Montrachet that takes its name from orchids and is labelled Cuvée des Orchidees.
The departure from plot names or lieu-dits — small geographical areas bearing a traditional name — and the alternate labelling are a novel move by Ponsot, so only time will tell if this is a bellwether for Burgundy wines.
Wines Crafted with Minimal Intervention
Credit: The wine barrels are analysed monthly for defects. (Photo: Laurent Ponsot)
Besides adopting more direct wine labelling, Ponsot advocates clean viticulture and crafts his wines with minimal intervention. He doesn’t add or remove anything from the cellar. Wine develops naturally from the fruit. “We don’t rack [the wine].
We don’t add sulphur dioxide (used to stabilise and sterilise the wines), we don’t fine and we don’t filter,” he explains. In the view of most winemakers, these interventions rob the wines of their true expression of terroir. “We use all natural ways and things. It is important for us to listen to the wine,” he explains.
Additionally, he is famous for never using new oak. “Why would we give the wine a taste of something that doesn’t come from the berry, the vine or the terroir?” he asks rhetorically. His barrels are always old, with each analysed monthly. Should a fault be detected, such as excessive volatile acidity, he rectifies it as soon as possible.
His winery is equipped with state-of-the-art Italian machinery and an in- house bottling plant, while bottles are fitted with new technology. It includes dots on the label that change colour when the temperature of the wine rises and near-field communication chips that verify the authenticity of a Grand Cru or Premier Cru bottle. The technology, he tells us, is not a sales gimmick but a measure against fraud.
At 69, Ponsot shows no signs of slowing down. He is happy to finally work with his son, who will one day run his estate. For now, Ponsot continues to march to his own beat.
