UWS Wine Shop Accused Of Selling Fake Bourbon By Inside Edition

UPPER WEST SIDE, NY — A booze controversy is shaking the Upper West Side after Acker Wines was recently accused by Inside Edition of selling a fake bottle of highly-priced bourbon.

The popular Upper West Side business located at 160 West 72nd Street is known as "America's Oldest Wine Shop" and has a 200-year history of selling alcohol in Manhattan.

Investigators from Inside Edition strode into the shop and asked for a "really nice bourbon."

An Inside Edition video of the transaction shows an employee from the shop selling the investigator what he said was an authentic bottle of $1,000 Colonel E. H. Taylor bourbon. The salesman proceeded to confirm multiple times that it was the high-end bourbon produced at the Buffalo Trace Distillery in Frankfurt, Kentucky.

Inside Edition proceeded to send the purchased bottle to the distillery for confirmation that it was in fact their product – and immediately got red flags.

All bottles sold from the Buffalo Trace Distillery come with a unique lot code as well as a special packaging tube. The bottle from Acker Wines had neither, Inside Edition reported.

The distillery proceeded to run a chemical analysis on the Acker Wines bottle of Colonel E. H. Taylor, which also did not match up with the authentic product, the report said.

"Based on all of the testing that we completed including the evaluation of the bottle itself, I do not believe this bottle is authentic," a representative from the Buffalo Trace Distillery told Inside Edition.

When Inside Edition went back to the Upper West Side wine shop to confront management about the fake bourbon allegation, an employee quickly ducked back into the store and the reporter started asking questions.

Acker sent the following statement to Patch about the allegation:

"A few months before we were contacted by Inside Edition, we became aware of a possible authentication issue with a select bottling of Colonel E.H. Taylor Four Grain Bourbon that we obtained from a private collector. After an immediate investigation into the authenticity of the bottles, including contacting the parent company of E.H. Taylor, Sazerac, our concerns were not alleviated, and we removed all of the bottles from our shelves and ceased all business with the providing collector. We immediately contacted and refunded all of the customers who had purchased bottles before our recall, save for one buyer who declined to provide his contact information. We now believe this was the bottle behind the Inside Edition story.

"We are committed to delivering the very best in fine and rare wine and spirits to our clients, and the authenticity of our products is paramount. We recently announced the launch of our global spirits division which included hiring US and Asia heads, and have also invested in authentication practices through the retention of multiple, well-respected, independent spirits authenticators."