Harriet Lembeck Harriet Lembeck - Wine Counterfeiter? Forrest Hills New York

I was at a dinner party the other night when the conversation turned to wine educator Harriet Lembeck of New York City. Stories abounded about her failing the Master of Wine examination and her breaking the law for thirty years at her wine school where she served wine without a liquor license as well as her having a residential certificate of occupancy for her building which she used for commercial purposes. But the best story of the evening is this which had everyone howling with laughter.

A number of years ago, Harriet went all over Manhattan collecting hundreds of empty wine bottles of Frances best wines from the city's best restaurants including Bordeaux's such as Chateaux Lafite Rothschild, Margeaux, Latour, Mouton Rothschild, Palmer and Burgundies such as Romanee Conti, Chambertin, Le Corton which she then proceeded to fill with colored water and put new capsules on to make the bottles look like they just came out of a wine store. She rebottled 40 cases in all - some 480 bottles which she then sent by truck as an unannounced surprise gift to a wealthy magazine publisher to his East Side Manhattan with high hopes and expectations even though it was a practical joke. I don't know that they called it back then but today we call rebottling wine counterfeiting and those who get caught doing it for sale are held accountable for doing it and go to jail.

As it turns out the wealthy publisher refused the shipment as he did not want his apartment cluttered with 480 bottles of unsolicited wine. Harriet never got the wine back and we presumed that the truck driver took the wine home telling his wife - honey I don't know what's so special about French wine - it tastes pretty watery to me.