( Wine-Searcher) - Hardy Rodenstock has died, but W. Blake Gray suggests someone should check the contents of his coffin.

Hardy Rodenstock died as he lived: in the shadows, with news of his passing at age 76 from a long illness not seeping out of the small German town of Oberaudorf for nearly three weeks.

That gap is sufficient for it to be time to say: Good riddance to bad rubbis

Rodenstock was a prolific wine counterfeiter who operated with impunity for two decades, and while he was sued in a German court, he was never arrested. He added a whiff of doubt to any older bottle of famous wine you might find anywhere in the world. It's a shame he never had a chance to sample prison cuisine.

Rodenstock, a former pop music promoter, did not invent wine counterfeiting. Nearly 2000 years ago, Roman author Pliny the Elder – most famous for his quote "In vino veritas" ("in wine, there is truth") – complained that cheap, fake versions of the popular Falernian wine were so prevalent that nobody could be sure they were drinking the real thing.