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Has the Montmartre Wine Scam Been Revived at Seoul’s Michelin Two-Star MOSU?
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What happened to a customer who ordered a course meal costing more than 400,000 won per person, along with expensive wine to match, seems closer to deception than a simple mistake.
The incident took place on April 18 at MOSU, the Michelin two-star restaurant run by celebrity chef Ahn Sung-jae, who appeared as a judge on Netflix’s cooking show Culinary Class Wars.
The customer expected the Chateau Leoville Barton 2000 vintage, listed on the menu as the pairing wine for the hanwoo dish and valued at around 300,000 to 400,000 won. However, the wine the sommelier poured into the glass while hiding the label was the 2005 vintage, priced in the high 200,000 won to 300,000 won range. It is also remarkable that the customer identified it by taste.
I once experienced wine pairing at The French Laundry in Napa Valley, United States. At the time, about five or six brands of wine were served by the glass according to the flow of the meal. The Chateau Leoville Barton 2000 ordered by the MOSU customer was likely one of those wines. It is presumed that one glass of wine was served as the 2005 vintage instead of the 2000 vintage.
A sommelier is human and can make mistakes. The problem is the response afterward.
When the customer, who had detected the difference in taste, asked to take a photo of the wine bottle “as a keepsake,” the sommelier said, “Just a moment,” took the bottle away, and only then returned with the 2000 vintage bottle. This means that what had been served was not the 2000 vintage but the 2005 vintage, and that the sommelier already knew it.
Although the glass contained the 2005 vintage, the sommelier tried to smooth things over by saying, “The 2000 bottle was downstairs,” and “I will let you taste this one, too.” This appears to be an attitude of trying to get past the incident “as if doing the customer a favor,” rather than offering an honest apology even after clearly recognizing the mistake.
On the hill of Montmartre in Paris, France, there is a typical business trick often used on tourists: “wine switching.” Around the square on Montmartre Hill, there are many restaurants with terraces. Tourists sit on the terraces, order a glass of wine, and enjoy the romance of the surroundings. When a customer orders an expensive wine by the glass, the waiter would not show the bottle but would bring out cheap wine poured in the kitchen, or sometimes even wine mixed from leftovers from other customers.
When the local media outlet Le Parisien sent in a sommelier disguised as a tourist to investigate, it exposed how restaurants in famous tourist spots openly sold low-quality wine at high prices while making excuses such as “It was a mistake.” Such shameless conduct took place in Paris, a city that prides itself as a sacred place of global gastronomy, and at one of its most visited tourist attractions.
In the local industry, this type of switching scam is called “reporting,” and it most commonly occurs when wine is ordered by the glass. When a customer orders an expensive Chablis or Sancerre from the menu, staff would bring out the cheapest house wine from the kitchen, usually ordinary Sauvignon Blanc.
They would not dare do this to French locals, since many French people can distinguish wine tastes. Instead, it was mainly done to passing tourists, especially Americans and other foreigners. I, too, ordered wine several times on a terrace in Montmartre Square, pretending to be romantic. I must have been taken in as well.
In France, selling wine falsely can constitute a “commercial deceptive act” under French consumer law, punishable by up to three years in prison and a fine of 30,000 euros, or about 45 million won. In short, it is a serious offense.
Sadly, the “evil spirit of Montmartre wine switching” has been revived in 2026 at a Michelin restaurant in Seoul.
Customers who pay hundreds of thousands of won per person for wine pairing are buying the “weight of time” contained in that wine’s vintage. The circumstances in which a 2005 vintage was served instead of a 2000 vintage, while the bottle was allegedly hidden until the customer noticed, are in the same line as the scammers of Montmartre Square.
Had the customer been a European gentleman, the sommelier would not have dared to switch the wine. The sommelier changed the wine because he judged that a Korean customer would not be able to distinguish the wine’s vintage. That was an insult to the customer.
Fine dining is not merely a place that sells food. The hundreds of thousands of won paid by a customer include the chef’s philosophy, the sommelier’s professionalism, and the invisible price of “trust.” They also include the value of respect received from the restaurant.
The scammers of Montmartre were selling glasses to passing tourists. But MOSU, a Michelin two-star restaurant, charges hundreds of thousands of won per person and mainly deals with regular customers, does it not? A Michelin star is not an ornament. It is a certificate of responsibility.
Chef Ahn Sung-jae and the MOSU team should not dismiss this incident as a simple mistake or bad luck. They must deeply reflect on how to rebuild the customer trust that has collapsed.
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