The market for prestige whiskeys is drawing scammers and counterfeits as coveted bottles sell for thousands of dollars

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A report by The New York Times this week states that there is a new trend in the American whiskey market of people selling bottles of premium brands refilled with cheaper alternatives.
The boom in domestic sales of super-premium American whiskey has led to the emergence of counterfeiters. There is a thriving secondary market for bottles at the very high end of the market where bottles can sell for $500 or more.

Private social-media groups are showing the secondary market. Kentucky and New York are two places that have loosened their laws to allow private collectors to sell through an auction or to licensed retailers.
According to the report, sales of super-premium American whiskey nearly doubled to 4 million cases from 2016 to 2020, compared with an average growth of 30% for all American whiskeys.

The newspaper opened its report with a story about a program producer who was told by a Manhattan wine shop that a bottle of Bourbon it was selling for about $1,000 was authentic. The Col. E.H. Taylor Four Grain Bourbon had a strip stamp over the top of the cork, but it was not the usual packaging.

The news producer took the purchased whiskey to Buffalo Trace, a Kentucky distillery that makes the Col. E.H. Taylor line of Bourbon. The bottle was re-opened and sold to the wine shop as part of a private collection.

According to the New York Times, the wine shop said it had already pulled several bottles from the collection and offered refunds on bottles it had already sold.
Buffalo Trace makes Pappy Van Winkle, a brand that can command more than $5,000 on the secondary market, and demand has been picking up for Bourbons made by other distilleries, including Brown-Forman.
Adam Herz is a writer and producer who created the "American Pie" franchise. The whiskey collector told the Times that he was interested when he saw online sales of empty bottles of high-end whiskey.
For a single bottle, that's380. Why? Herz estimated that there were thousands of bottles of fake whiskey sold for over $2,000. He said that he had seen suburban dads counterfeiting for an extra buck.

Most distilleries are slowly taking action on this matter, and few are willing to admit the problem publicly as they fear encouraging counterfeiters and discouraging interest in their legitimate products. Shrink-wrap seals can be easily faked and many distilleries still package bottles with them.
Business Insider has an original article.