White Zin is In: 1

Summary

Blood Vines: Episode 1 - "White Zin is In"

Hosted by Chris Walker | Released on February 5, 2025

---

I. Introduction: A Chilling Discovery

In the opening moments of Blood Vines, investigative journalist Chris Walker transports listeners to a sweltering day in California's Central Valley. Despite the oppressive heat outside, Walker finds himself in the cold, clinical environment of the San Joaquin County Superior Courthouse. Here, he meticulously examines a collection of evidence related to a baffling murder case intertwined with a massive wine fraud scandal.

"How can you ever really trust what you’re drinking?"
— Chris Walker [00:00]

Walker introduces the premise of the series: a dark tale where greed, deception, and murder converge within one of the largest wine scams in U.S. history, centered around the powerful Licciardi family.

---

II. The Sweet Beginnings of White Zinfandel

The story delves into the accidental creation of White Zinfandel, a wine that would revolutionize the American beverage landscape. In 1975, Bob Trincero, a winemaker at Sutter Home Winery in St. Helena, California, inadvertently halted the fermentation of red Zinfandel grapes by introducing leftover runoff juice. This mishap resulted in a sweet, pale pink wine that Trincero decided to sell despite its initial lackluster appeal.

"You have to trust what's on a label."
— Chris Walker [05:13]

White Zinfandel quickly gained popularity, particularly among those who found traditional wines too dry or acidic. Its sweet profile served as a "gateway drug" to the complex world of wines, making it accessible to a broader audience.

---

III. The Meteoric Rise and Market Domination

White Zinfandel's success transformed Sutter Home from a struggling winery into a commercial powerhouse. Sales skyrocketed from 25,000 bottles in 1980 to over 12 million six years later, capturing nearly 10% of the American wine market. This explosion not only cemented White Zinfandel's place in the industry but also ignited intense competition and supply chain chaos among other wineries.

"White zin was in."
— Chris Walker [13:01]

Despite skepticism from traditional winemakers, major brands like Mondavi eventually succumbed to the trend, leading to a fierce scramble for Zinfandel grapes and driving prices to unprecedented heights.

---

IV. Brewing Trouble: Fraud and Scandal in the Wine Industry

As demand for White Zinfandel soared, the scarcity of authentic Zinfandel grapes created fertile ground for fraud. Winemakers began mislabeling cheaper grape varieties as Zinfandel to meet the insatiable market demand. This deceptive practice not only inflated profits but also threatened the integrity of California's esteemed wine industry.

"Wine is to California what apples are to Washington."
— Kathryn Kull [20:10]

The fraudulent activities extended beyond mere mislabeling, hinting at larger-scale deception orchestrated by influential figures within the industry. This covert manipulation set the stage for a multi-million dollar scandal with far-reaching implications.

---

V. The Investigation Unfolds: Unmasking the Fraud

Enter Steve Lapham, a passionate wine aficionado and prosecutor at the U.S. Attorney's Office in Sacramento. Initially dismissive of the wine fraud case brought to his attention by an ATF agent, Lapham's deep appreciation for fine wines transforms his perspective, compelling him to pursue the investigation with vigor.

"Far from tossing out the investigation, Lapham wanted answers."
— Chris Walker [20:22]

Under Lapham's leadership, a team of state agents conducts extensive stakeouts across California's wine country, meticulously tracking grape shipments from vineyards to wineries. Their efforts uncover a widespread pattern of grape mislabeling, particularly targeting White Zinfandel productions.

"This is crap wine."
— Steve Lapham [14:44]

---

VI. Enter the Licciardi Family: Power, Influence, and Crime

The investigation pinpoints the Licciardi family as central figures in the fraud. Michael Licciardi, representing Corvette Co., appears to be the public face of the operation, coordinating grape shipments to prominent wineries like Delicato Vineyards. However, the true mastermind is revealed to be his father, Jack Licciardi—a powerful and influential figure within California's wine industry.

"This is blood, you know, this is your blood."
— Kathryn Kull [27:55]

Jack Licciardi's extensive control over grape distribution and his ability to influence major wineries underscore the depth of the family's involvement. As the investigation progresses, it becomes evident that their empire is built on deceit and possibly criminal activities, including the violent murder tied to the fraud.

"You've been listening to episode one of Blood Vines, a narrative series from Foxapus Inc."
— Chris Walker [27:10]

---

VII. Conclusion: A Tale of Trust and Betrayal

Blood Vines Episode 1 masterfully intertwines the seemingly innocuous story of White Zinfandel with a gripping narrative of fraud, power struggles, and murder. The Licciardi family's story serves as a cautionary tale about the lengths to which individuals and families will go to protect their interests, even at the expense of an entire industry's reputation.

The episode leaves listeners with profound questions about trust and authenticity in the products we consume, emphasizing that sometimes the sweetest things carry the darkest secrets.

---

Notable Quotes with Timestamps

• "How can you ever really trust what you’re drinking?" — Chris Walker [00:00]
• "White zinfandel was kind of a gateway drug to better wines in some ways." — Kathryn Kull [05:13]
• "White zin was in." — Chris Walker [13:01]
• "Wine is to California what apples are to Washington." — Kathryn Kull [20:10]
• "This is crap wine." — Steve Lapham [14:44]
• "This is blood, you know, this is your blood." — Kathryn Kull [27:55]

---

Blood Vines continues to unravel the intricate web of deceit and power in the wine industry, promising listeners an enthralling journey through one of America's most unexpected scandals.

Transcript

[Chris Walker]

You're listening to an episode of a Wonder exclusive series. To continue listening, join Wondry and enjoy ad free listening to over 50,000 episodes, Early Access to your favorite podcasts, and more. Join Wondery in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. This podcast contains strong language and violence. Listener discretion is advised. June 11, 2021 It's a stifling hot day in California's Central Valley. The air feels thick and heat shimmers above the ground, but the area I've just walked into is cold, clinical, bureaucratic. I pull out my phone to record a voice memo. Okay, so I just got to the San Joaquin County Superior Courthouse to view the case exhibits. We're going to go through them in the order that they were presented at trial and we'll see what comes up here. I'm in a private room off the courthouse's second floor lobby, and spread out before me on tables are envelopes, bags and boxes. A legal clerk named Margarita stands among them, wearing gloves. She doesn't want me to record her while she gives instructions, but they are as follows. I'm not to touch anything. I'm not to take photos. She will handle each piece of evidence so I can observe it. And yes, she says, I can record voice memos as I view the items, I'm nervous and excited. While I've read a lot about the evidence presented in this room, I've never seen any of it for myself. We start going through the case exhibits and Margarita looks a little grossed out. I can't blame her. So I'm looking at the pillowcase now, which has dried bodily fluid on it and looks kind of brown and crusty. And there's a floral print pattern with some dried brown stuff in the corner. Might be blood, might be other bodily fluid. Next comes a cotton sweater, its backside definitely dark with blood. There's a towel, a spent bullet casing, the murder weapon. It's the body of a Colt.45, but it's a.22, so it doesn't look like a.22, even though it is a small caliber gun. But yeah, kind of like a blue steel with wooden grips on the side. So far, most everything matches the police reports. There are a few surprises, like when the clerk produces a paper lunch bag full of audio cassette tapes. I'm gonna need copies of those. And then, well, I'm not prepared for what comes next. So I'm being presented with some of the photos, which is really quite striking to see for the first time. Having only read lots of descriptions of this, it's the murder scene. And as I take in the details, it's the little things that get me. The crooked angle of the victim's neck. The way the man lies backwards, one leg straight, the other knee bent on a sofa. The expression on his face. Peaceful, relaxed, unsuspecting. The photograph's grainy quality only adds to the eeriness. But I am also unsettled for a different reason. After years of searching, I think I finally know who killed him. My name is Chris Walker. I'm an investigative journalist. And for almost half a decade now, I've been researching how the man in the photograph was connected to an entirely different case. A fraud case. You see, before his death, the victim was just one person under investigation for a multimillion dollar scam in the 1980s. It sent ripples through one of California's most iconic industries. But no one thought that case would turn violent. The murder caught everyone off guard, including, as I was learning, federal investigators.

[Kathryn Kull]

I was sitting in my family room watching the evening news. A spot came on about a murder. And he was murdered with a.22 caliber bullet to the head, which is a very mafia type way of doing it.

[Chris Walker]

But the feds weren't looking into the mafia, or at least they didn't think they were. No, they'd been looking into a case involving wine. Lots and lots of wine sent from the heart of grape country to living rooms across America. We're talking about one of the largest scams in California history, affecting millions of bottles. But here's the thing. It's not like these bottles were top shelf wine.

[Kathryn Kull]

This is what I call an eye roll drink. It's not even really wine. It's just pop drink with alcohol. When you're talking about white zin, I actually didn't like it as a wine. But I think white zinfandel was kind of a gateway drug to better wines in some ways.

[Chris Walker]

White zinfandel. The Fed's case centered around a pink drink with notes of jolly ranchers that once was, to the embarrassment of many America's top selling wine. This is the sugary sensation that birthed Americans obsession with turning countless drinkers onto pink wines. Even though from the get go, snobs saw the drink as kitsch. And federal investigators, while they could see fraud developing all around white zinn, they didn't think the stakes were all that high. Some went so far as to call the investigation a joke. But what they couldn't anticipate is that this sweet drink would develop a sour history. Its unexpected success led the wine industry Down a dark path, because fraud is one thing, but murder? What might have been a pop culture scam set in the fast and frivolous 80s turned into something shocking. Many stones were left unturned, questions unanswered. But I've been on the hunt for those answers and am about to reveal the full story for the very first time. It's a parable of greed that hardly anyone knows about. And the wine industry would prefer to keep it that way.

[Kathryn Kull]

There was always the sense that you couldn't really trust what was in the field. As time went on, you heard stories.

[Chris Walker]

About a lot of different people and.

[Kathryn Kull]

Wineries involved in it. People have fought over it and died over it and made lots of wine over it.

[Chris Walker]

So pour yourself a glass and join me because I'm going to tell you a story.

[Kathryn Kull]

It's quite a curious story of that.

[Chris Walker]

Crazy deal with the grapes and all that stuff.

[Kathryn Kull]

They were saying they stashed the money and I mean there's just all these.

[Chris Walker]

Theories that went around, man, about stuff like that, about a family and its secrets.

[Kathryn Kull]

We all felt that the family being the mafia, we're covering up something big.

[Chris Walker]

About deception and betrayal.

[Kathryn Kull]

They both totally disappointed him. They broke his heart, they broke his spirit.

[Chris Walker]

And a scandal that threatened the integrity of an entire industry.

[Kathryn Kull]

This is a big fraud, multi million.

[Chris Walker]

Dollar fraud before it brought down a wine dynasty. I mean, the scandal takes on its own life. From Foxapus Inc. This is Blood Vines. Let's start at the beginning. White Zinfandel. Never heard of White Zin. You must be under 40. Not too long ago you couldn't watch a sitcom like Frasier without a moment like this coming up. Does she ever act delusional?

[Kathryn Kull]

Well, she often claims that she's responsible for the success of our show. Building, building.

[Chris Walker]

That's good, that's good. Does she display below average intelligence?

[Kathryn Kull]

She once ordered a bottle of White Zin. Vandal Jetpa.

[Chris Walker]

Never mind the joke, it's not very good. Point is, white Zin used to be everywhere. And even if it's not ringing a bell, you've surely heard of its sibling.

[Kathryn Kull]

It's more than a drink. So this is the life.

[Chris Walker]

It's a lifestyle. It's good times. Being with friends, not having a care in the world.

[Kathryn Kull]

Once considered the red headed stepchild of.

[Chris Walker]

Wines is having its moment in the sun. For the past 15 years, America has been in the middle of a fervor. These pink wines now account for nearly 10% of the American wine market. And they've even developed their own Subculture.

[Kathryn Kull]

First pour that shoots out. Woo.

[Chris Walker]

Oh, man.

[Kathryn Kull]

Yay. Cheers, y'all.

[Chris Walker]

Maybe you've seen the bottles of White Girl or the all day tank tops. This Barbie colored drink is sipped on screen by the Beverly Hills Housewives and is a favorite on Instagram, backdropped by Coastal Vineyards Nofilter. But what we're experiencing right now is actually second or even third coming in America. The real revolution, the one that really put it on the map, happened in the 1980s when white Zinfandel took over the wine world. It's worth the briefest history lesson here, not just because its rise laid the foundations for murder, but because White Zin's origin story and its staying power are kind of wild. My aunt loves White Zinn. She will always love White Zinn. I think she's in her 80s. This is Kathryn Kull. I'm a podcast host, but I'm also a recovering wine journalist. I have written five books on wine and my fourth book was called and Cole says There are many, many people just like her aunt. But what most don't know is that White Zinfandel came about because of a mistake. As Cole writes, we have to go back to the year 1975. The setting, Sutter Home Winery in St. Helena, California. There we come across winemaker Bob Trincero, who was trying to make a name for his then struggling family winery. Some of his efforts included making traditional French style, which had been around for at least a few centuries. And so one afternoon, Trinchero took some leftover runoff juice from red Zinfandel grapes.

[Kathryn Kull]

He kind of thoughtlessly dumped some juice.

[Chris Walker]

Into a tank of this, but he didn't realize it was almost done fermenting. And so the juice just stopped the fermentation. And so then he had this lower.

[Kathryn Kull]

Alcohol wine that was sweet.

[Chris Walker]

He thought, oh my God, what am I going to do with this? The result was a total abomination if you're trying to make a dry. The kinds of pale pink wines drinkers in Europe had been used to since the days of Louis xiv. But Trinchero decided to sell his half fermented concoction anyway. He called it White Zinfandel. And you know what? People loved it. As Cole says, Americans talk dry, but they drink sweet. For all those who loved the iconic sugary cocktails of the 50s and 60s and often found wine too dry or acidic for their tastes, White Zinn hit all the right notes. It also completely transformed Sutter Home from a struggling winery to a commercial powerhouse. With shocking speed, their blush colored Wine took America by storm. As the Chicago Tribune put it, pretty in pink. Blush is the word many people use to describe the wine of the 1980s. White Zinfandel. Advertising campaigns presented this newest kind of as a ticket to the rarefied society of wine, a sort of gateway for the uninitiated, many of whom needed a sweeter wine to lure them towards the complex world of fermented grapes. Pour yourself a glass and you could straddle old world traditions in California, Chicago. A touch of sophistication without being too snobby.

[Kathryn Kull]

What do you feel like, red or white? Surprise me. Today's cooking is lighter, fresher, full of.

[Chris Walker]

Natural, delicate flavors like today's wine.

[Kathryn Kull]

White Zinfandel Gallo.

[Chris Walker]

So how'd it do?

[Kathryn Kull]

I'd say perfect, but I'd never hear the end of it.

[Chris Walker]

And the thing is, the advertising worked. Many tried out wine for the first time by drinking white zinfandel. It was part of a broader cultural shift as Americans went from preferring beer and cocktails to wine. But behind the scenes, well, white zinn's effects on the industry were dramatic and transformative. Not all winemakers had thought this was going to be the next big thing.

[Kathryn Kull]

Two big producers, Madhavi family, Baron family, they were saying, this is just a flash. It's going to go away. It's just a trend. It's going to. It'll be dead in a year.

[Chris Walker]

This is Barry Wiss, who's been Sutter Homes brand ambassador and a confidant of Bob Trinchero's for more than 27 years.

[Kathryn Kull]

And so Bob was really took the advantage of that. And he said, I'm going to lock up all the contracts to buy Zinfandel. I'm going to buy as much as Zinfandel as California has. And that he did.

[Chris Walker]

As it turned out, the other wineries badly miscalculated by ignoring the white zinfandel fad. As sales of Sutter Homes wine grew year over year, going from 25,000 bottles in 1980 to over 12 million six years later, no one could deny it anymore. White zin was in. By 1983, even Mondavi and Barringer had caved. But in arriving late to the party and allowing Trinchero to buy up all those grapes, they had to source whatever zinfandel was left. It was an industry wide fight for scraps. And this created havoc for supply chains, not only for producers of white zinfandel, but also for producers of traditional red zinfandel.

[Kathryn Kull]

I'm sorry, I Don't do pink. I don't do sweet. I don't do wimpy. That's not gonna happen.

[Chris Walker]

This is Joel Peterson, a veteran winemaker of Sonoma county who is well known for his rich red Zinn infidels. He was the founder of Ravenswood Winery.

[Kathryn Kull]

Like when I started in the business, $200 to $300 a ton for premium north coast infidel was pretty standard. And a few years later, it was up to $1,000 a ton. Then it began to move beyond that.

[Chris Walker]

It didn't take a genius to see what caused the rampant inflation. White Zinfandel was going gangbusters while the supply of its namesake grape tanked. To make matters worse, White Zinfandel was.

[Kathryn Kull]

An inexpensive wine, and the economics of it were difficult if your grape pricing got much above $500 a ton.

[Chris Walker]

And as the creator and leading brand of white Zen, Sutter Home had set a low price to appeal to the widest market possible. If this were someone's first wine, you didn't want to scare them off with an expensive price tag. This was a casual wine, a party wine, a flirty, fun sip in the sun and spill some gossip kind of wine. No one expected to pay more than $3 a bottle, maybe four. And so as other producers attempted to get in on the game, they found they needed to meet Sutter Home's price point. But how to make cheap white zin when its main ingredient approached stratospheric prices? Well, perhaps now you can see the dilemma those age old market forces at play. But the truth is, not everyone was dismayed at this turn of events. For anyone paying close attention to the situation, it smelled like opportunity. An unprecedented cash grab. A situation that could be exploited by mislabeling grapes. Anyone who managed to pass off cheap kinds of grapes as the more expensive Zinfandel variety stood to make sky high profits. Provided, of course, they didn't get caught. Steve Lapham remembers sitting at his desk at the U.S. attorney's office in Sacramento when an unexpected visitor came to see him one day in December 1988.

[Kathryn Kull]

I was a pretty young prosecutor. I'd been in the civil side of the U.S. attorney's office for about three.

[Chris Walker]

Years and as a criminal prosecutor, even less time than that. But the visitor was an agent from the atf, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, who knew that Lapham held sway and was hoping for a favor.

[Kathryn Kull]

He brought this case to me looking for a declination, meaning a decision from the prosecutor that we don't need to pursue this investigation anymore.

[Chris Walker]

The agent started complaining about how this case he'd been assigned was a complete waste. Waste of time. It was about some kind of wine thing. And the atf. Despite the A in its name, federal agents hadn't really prioritized booze since Prohibition, the days of al Capone. The ATF of the 80s mostly did gun and gang investigations, the exciting busting down doors kind of cases. So the agent wanted to know, could Lapham help him get the investigation tossed out so he could get back to the important stuff? Little did he know that he had.

[Kathryn Kull]

The bad fortune to come to somebody who fancied himself a wine connoisseur.

[Chris Walker]

Lapham can remember the exact moment he became hooked. In his 20s. A wealthy friend had invited him over for a meal, and he broke out.

[Kathryn Kull]

A bottle of 1964 Chateau Lafitte Rothschild.

[Chris Walker]

One of the finest Bordeaux wines of all time.

[Kathryn Kull]

I just remember it being very velvety, gliding down the throat, not having any kind of tannins or bitter quality at all. It just changed my whole thinking about wine.

[Chris Walker]

Lapham experienced a wine epiphany. And ever since that moment, the prosecutor was a through and through wine aficionado. So when Lapham looked at the case the ATF agent brought him, Instead of seeing the complaint as trivial, he realized that a massive problem was putting down roots in California's wine country.

[Kathryn Kull]

It wasn't just the fact that it involved wine, but I could see that it involved a fraud on a pretty large scale. Large scale in terms of the amount of wine and grapes that were being moved, but also dollar amount, multi million dollar fraud.

[Chris Walker]

The complaint, built upon reports from the ATF in California's Department of Food and Agriculture, suggested that too much wine of certain was hitting store shelves. There didn't seem to be enough vineyards producing the right kinds of grapes to make that much wine. The numbers didn't add up. Like, if you only had enough grapes to make 100 bottles, you can't end up with 200. It looked to Lapham like somewhere between the vineyard and the grocery store, someone or a group of people was deliberately mislabeling huge quantities of grapes. And as he read through the reports, he began to worry.

[Kathryn Kull]

Wine is to California what apples are to Washington. I mean, this is a big business, and the reputation's made on quality, so that has to be defended.

[Chris Walker]

Far from tossing out the investigation, Lapham wanted answers. Just how much grape mislabeling was going on, who was behind it, and what did law enforcement already know? The prosecutor soon got in touch with Some of California's food and agriculture agents who'd been poking around the problem just a few months earlier. The agents told him. During the fall grape harvest season, a team of them had started doing stakeouts across California's wine country.

[Kathryn Kull]

You can imagine this, a couple of regulatory agents sitting in a truck at the crack of dawn, watching the fields being harvested.

[Chris Walker]

Their mission, to figure out where the fraud was happening. Was it in the field? At the winery? At the store? These agents wanted to follow grapes from vine to wine. Because, as Greg Barnett, who would become the case's lead agent from the atf, remembers, these agents didn't just sit by the field twiddling their thumbs.

[Kathryn Kull]

Yeah, because they were able to identify the grapes in the field, follow the.

[Chris Walker]

Trucks, and then after tailing the trucks, they wrote down the delivery times at each winery and reviewed the winery's paperwork. And they could see that the variety.

[Kathryn Kull]

Had been changed from what they knew was in the field versus what showed up at the winery.

[Chris Walker]

Gotcha. In other words, either the grape handlers or the wineries had created false documents to accompany the fruit. The wrong grapes were showing up as the right kinds in the winery's paperwork. Cheap grapes magically became more expensive ones. And that was basically it. This wasn't Enron as far as criminal activity went. The coverups weren't exactly hard to track. And one of the first things investigators noticed was that the bulk of the mislabeling seemed to involve grapes destined for bottles of white Zin. Even Lapham had to admit that was amusing. Really? White zin? It seemed ironic that falsified grapes would end up in the Kool Aid of. And as he and many others around the case agreed, this is crap wine. But the thing that wasn't so amusing, the scale of the fraud. Over just a few weeks in 1988, state agents had tracked multiple shipments, each with hundreds of tons of mislabeled grapes, to numerous wineries, including well known brands like Sebastiani Vineyards, Charles Krug, and Robert Mondavi. That was a staggering amount of fruit. You see, one ton of grapes can produce 150 gallons of wine, or nearly 750 bottles. So every delivery with hundreds of tons of mislabeled grapes might produce hundreds of thousands of bottles. Did the wineries know they were making so much wine with the wrong grapes? Lapham and Barnett weren't yet sure. But based on evidence they gathered, there was one name that kept popping up. A family operation they needed to check out. Given its popularity, pretty much every big winery was now producing white Zinfandel. And from the state agents stakeouts, it appeared some of them were making wine with falsified grapes, including the nation's 10th largest winery, Delicato Vineyards. And it was through Delicato that Lapham and Barnett found a potential lead in their case. Almost all of Delicato's grapes, mislabeled or not, were being delivered through one company.

[Kathryn Kull]

Corvette was their primary source of grapes, right? So much so that Mike Licciardi had an office at Delicato. So during the crush, he would be there almost 24. 7.

[Chris Walker]

Michael Licciardi. This was the representative for Corvette Co. A young guy in his 30s with black hair and blue green eyes. At Delicato, he helped coordinate shipments of grapes into the winery compound, personally overseeing their deliveries. Did Michael have a hand in any fraudulent grape shipments? Lapham and Barnett pinned him as a suspect. But even as they began looking into Corvette Co. It also became clear that that Michael was just the face of the operation. Corvette was really run by Michael's father, Jack Licciardi. And while the feds didn't know it yet, behind the scenes in California's wine industry, Jack's name carried weight. He was incredibly powerful. A man who coordinated the vast movements of grapes around California and whose deals could make or break a winery. His status was legendary. In fact, Jack Licciardi is how I first heard about this story. Like most people, including in the wine industry, I had no idea any of this ever happened. Whenever I used to hear the words wine fraud, I'd think of those flashy cases involving rare and expensive bottles. You know, the kinds I'm talking about.

[Kathryn Kull]

A young, debonair bon vivant from Indonesia, with his seemingly exquisite taste and knowledge of the world's finest wines. His name is Rudy Kurniawan.

[Chris Walker]

Rudy Kurniawan who went to prison for counterfeiting rare wines. This story is not that it's more universal than some millionaires being duped over stupidly expensive bottles. This involves all of us, a tale about bottles any of us could buy at the corner wine store. And that raises some fundamental questions about trust. How much do we really know about the things we buy? If we drink mislabeled wine and don't know it, is anyone really harmed? Do we need to trust what's on a label? Yet even as I began grappling with those questions, a much bigger story revealed itself. One full of plot twists, outsized characters, a unsolved mysteries, and the kind of intrigue more often found in movies than real life. Much of it is stranger than fiction. It's all centered around the Licciardi family. And just like when Lapham and his team launched a federal investigation, I'd go from being mildly curious, I think there's something there, to getting sucked into a tale involving car chases, threats, lies and murder. And so not only is this story about one of the largest alcohol related frauds since the 1930s, one implicating America's favorite pink wine, it's also a story about family, honor, justice and blood.

[Kathryn Kull]

I don't know what she was thinking at that time, but all I could see was fear on her face. I said, you better stop calling here. I know who you are and where you are and I will report you to the. Please just tell me where the money is. Tell me what happened to the money. My brother goes, get that gun out of here. I don't want to see it. I want to hear about it. I know family can get very, very heated, even more so than non family, but it's, it's still. I mean, this is blood, you know, this is your blood.

[Chris Walker]

You've been listening to episode one of Blood Vines, a narrative series from Foxapus Inc. Our executive producers are Laura Krantz and Scott Carney. Story editing is done by Alicia Lincoln and Laura Krantz. Blood Vines is scored and mixed by Louis Weeks. I'm your host and creator, Chris Walker. This podcast was made possible in part by the Fund for Investigative Journalism. If you're enjoying Blood Vines, please leave us a review wherever you listen to podcasts and please share it with your friends. It really helps more people find out about our show.