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 I met Stephen Williams who is reportedly filing for liquidation, last April a few weeks after the case filed by the US wine collector Julian LeCraw Jr against AWC for alleged fraud had been thrown out of the court. He had invited me to his office and since I was in London to judge at the International Wine Challenge, I accepted his offer for dinner where he could explain to me about the case and other aspects of the business.
We tasted a JJ Prum Riesling 2012 and Gevrey Chambertin 2005 at the Tasting Room of his office in Queen Anne Street, close to the Bond Street tube station, London. This is the room where AWC has been conducting wine tastings for their clients-even renting out the venue for various wine tasting events to outsiders. It was quite tastefully and elegantly done up, with a small kitchen at the back.
He repeated to me what he had already said earlier, as we were having dinner at the chic 28-50 Restaurant where the decanted St. Emilion Angelus Grand Cru Classe A 1990 was the protagonist. He said, ‘we gave the court all the relevant documents demonstrating diligence done into the provenance and background on the wines was extensive and fully disclosed to Mr. LeCraw Jr. at the time he purchased them. It was also unfair of Mr LeCraw to attempt to gain $25 million dollars, over wines he purchased for $450,000.’ It was not certain then whether LeCraw would file an appeal but Stephen said ,’ we are still willing to talk to him as we would with any other important client.’
Stephen did not share the legal costs incurred to defend the company but knowing the heavy cost of litigation in the US, it must have been back-breaking. He also blames AWC’s problems on a significant drop in Bordeaux wine trading, particularly in 2012 and 2013. According to Decanter, the company is filing for bankruptcy and he will meet the shareholders and creditors on Jun 10. The case will be shortly listed in London Gazette where all such cases are reported.
Stephen had reportedly told Decanter a day earlier that he had been heartbroken but they were going to put the 26-year old company into the liquidation process. He named Andrew Tate of Kreston Reeves, known for dealing extensively for the rarest wines since AWC was formed, as the liquidator.
Williams said AWC’s capital had been depleted. The firm had cut jobs from 35 to 12 in the past year, since I had met him in April 2015. The Hong Kong office had been shut several weeks ago. A merger deal with another London-based wine merchant apparently also fell apart in the final stages earlier this year.
US wine collector Julian LeCraw Jr had damaged the company financially, and he attributed some of the impact to ‘negative media coverage’.
 In a reply to the email sent to him by delWine, he confirmed he had spoken with a journalist from Decanter-and only Decanter. He indicated specifically that he did not intend to spend the coming days in dialogue with journalists and that he must look after the interests of their customers on priority. He however, added that he would be delighted to speak with me (Subhash Arora) for a few minutes at a fixed time on Friday evening since he would be unavailable because of the family weekend after that.
Unfortunately, he did not call me back at the appointed hour. In the flurry of activities he might not have been able to do so. His comments will be published later, if and when received. An important issue that needs to be addressed is a detailed report carried out in winefraud.com which lists several irregularities in the books during the last few difficult years. Stephen had told Decanter that the report was exaggerated.
AWC had also tied up in 2010 with Sonal Holland, an educator who is now pursuing MW, as a Distributor for India for fine wines-a project that was doomed for failure because of the heavy import duties and lack of provenance the moment the wines entered the Indian shores. It was reported in delWine . Both he and
Sonal had confirmed that the project never took off perhaps due to the apprehensions I had expressed anyway.
Stephen has been an ace in the world of antique and rare wines, with 26- year experience in the business at AWC alone. The problems faced by the company are also indicative of the inherent risks, especially for Indian resident investors, in investing with third parties for buying En Primeur or expensive wines and storing them outside India; bringing them to India defeats the purpose of such investments anyway.
Alleged Fake Wines Case against Antique Wine Company Dismissed
Subhash Arora
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