Fraud, Wine, Porn, Cash.

Some of you may remember the piece I wrote a bit ago about the wines of adult film actress Savanna Samson. Savanna was goodly enough to give me a chance to interview her. I didn't, however, find her wines particularly good -- which put me at odds with Robert Parker. Parker's 90+ score on her first wine gave her instant street cred in the wine world.

Fast forward a bit. Vine reader (and Phi Kappa Sigma fraternity brother) Nate L. forwarded me this article from Slate about the sale of high-end counterfeit wine. This article intertwines with the central story in the excellent read "The Billionaire's Vinegar." (This is a must read for wine aficionados and history buffs alike.)

In any case, one of the first names in the article is Daniel Oliveros, which sounded very familiar to me for some reason. I should have known it immediately -- but that's Savanna Samson's husband (her married name is Natalie Oliveros), and this little conspiratorial exercise in selling fake wine involved not only Oliveros, but Parker as well.

I don't want to cast too many aspersions here -- and I don't want to engage to fully in the sort of guilt-by-association stuff that so many other folks use as "journalism," but I've learned enough to know that the world of high wine Illuminati is a very small one.

Savanna's wine was an Italian red. According to her, Parker was tasting Chateauneuf-de-Pape at the time and happened to agree to give Savanna's wine a taste while he was in the midst of going through that spread. It seems quite the lucky coincidence that Savanna a) was able to squeeze her wine into this tasting, even though it was unrelated and b) that she just happened to be in the same place to garner such high praise from Parker.

I've got no problem with someone using his or her connections. This is a world of shameless self-promotion, after all -- but, at least in my mind, this calls into question a lot of the "objectivity" of the folks who move the wine world with a swirl of a glass.