The Thomas Jefferson’s Chateau Lafite — The Investigation

(There you can read the first and the second part of this story)

Bill Koch was been the owner of Koch Industries; when he sold his shares he earned $550 million, and in this way he began his collection of wines, adding to his father’s one.

A billionaire has a doubt

In 1988, he spent $500,000 to buy four bottle that had been in Thomas Jefferson’s collection, and all of these were part of the same lot auctioned at Christie’s on the evening of December 5, 1985: a 1787 Mouton and a 1787 Lafite, a 1784 Mouton and a 1784 Lafite. He bought them all from private resellers or from brokers as Farr Vintners, a British retailer.

Koch put the bottles in his cellar and in the next fifteen years he showed them tho his friends then startet to verify the provenance of the bottles in order to increase the value of his collection: the only document in his hands was the one signed by Broadband, but it wasn’t actually a certificate of origin. The Thomas Jefferson Foundation at Monticello in Charlottesville was asked for an opinion by his attorneys, and the Foundation replied that it believed the bottles had never belonged to the president.

Koch had collections of paintings and Wild West items, guns, and hats of the most famous people of the time…