In the late ’80s, when billionaire William Koch bought four bottles of wine for $500,000. The bottles came from a collection owned by Hardy Rodenstock, a big name in the German music scene, who claimed he’d discovered them in a hidden Parisian cellar. Most of the bottles dated back to 1787, said Rodenstock, and they happened to once belong to the third President of the United States.

It seemed plausible that the bottles were Thomas Jefferson’s. The man was quite the oenophile. Not only did he keep detailed descriptions of various French wines, he even supplied George Washington with the very best stuff. But when the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston was getting ready to display Koch’s collection of wines, they learned some disturbing news. According to the folks at Monticello (who possessed Jefferson’s oenological notes), the ex-president had never purchased that particular kind of wine. It looked like Hardy Rodenstock had conned Bill Koch. Koch hired former FBI agent to investigate. He put together a team that included experts from Scotland Yard and MI5. The trick was doing it in such a way that they didn’t have to open the bottles and ruin the contents. 

The first test was thanks to the atomic bomb. When the first atomic bombs went off in the 1940s, they unleashed a totally new radioactive isotope called cesium-137. Before 1945, cesium-137 simply didn’t exist, but today, it’s everywhere. It’s even inside of you right now, and if Hubert could prove there was cesium-137 inside the wine, he would know in was bottled post-1945.So the test was done in a special lab in the alps.There wasn’t any cesium-137 to be found. The wine had been bottled before 1945.

Next the engraved letters on each bottle of Th. J. – obviously stood for “Thomas Jefferson.”  But the team discovered the letters had been engraved with an electric dentistry tool.

Bill Koch launched eight lawsuits against Hardy Rodenstock. The suits cost the billionaire at least $25 million, but he managed to recoup some of his losses when the courts awarded him $12 million in damages. (This horrible math bothered me until I moved the decimal point. Imagine if you had $1000 and you wanted to find out something. You probably be willing to spend $25 and then only get $15 to gain your answer. If only I could just move the decimal point in my own bank account.)