$12,000 fake puts wine buffs out of pocket

It is one of the world's finest, rarest and most expensive wines, but connoisseurs appear to have been duped into spending up to ₤7000 ($12,000) a bottle on fake Romanee-Conti for years, after police arrested two men suspected of counterfeiting.

An Italian father and son are accused of using wax to make labels appear older and are thought to have earned more than ₤1.8 million by selling about 400 fake bottles of the Burgundy in Britain and Europe.

	The Romanee-Conti vineyard covers a mere 1.8ha, and produces only 6000 bottles a year. Roald Dahl likened the wine to "an orgasm at once in the mouth and nose"

The scam was exposed after a year-long investigation and the pair were arrested in Italy as police also raided 20 homes and warehouses in France, Britain, Germany, The Netherlands and Cyprus. France has requested their extradition. Five other suspects have been arrested.

Marie-Christine Tarrare, a prosecutor in Dijon, central France, who helped to co-ordinate the investigation, said police were still searching for other suspects. The fake bottles were "near perfect copies of the originals", she said. "At the moment, it's impossible to tell exactly how many counterfeit bottles have been put on the market."

The Domaine de la Romanee-Conti estate in the Cote d'Or region of Burgundy alerted French police to the appearance of fake bottles last year.

About 6000 bottles of Romanee-Conti are produced each year on a vineyard that covers just 1.8ha. It is usually sold through exclusive networks and has been targeted by fraudsters.

A US collector paid €87,000 for a bottle of the 1945 vintage at a Christie's auction in Geneva in 2011. It is rare because a freezing spring that year yielded only a fraction of the usual harvest.

Laurent Ponsot, a Burgundy winemaker, said: "Only two casks of the 1945 vintage were produced, which is equivalent to 600 bottles, but over the past 25 years, more than five times that number have been discovered. To connoisseurs, this vintage is like the holy grail."

The number of counterfeit bottles has risen in recent years as demand for expensive wine has soared, especially in China and Russia, where they are often coveted as a status symbol rather than for their taste.

Many upmarket restaurants, hotels and wine collectors smash empty bottles to prevent them being used by counterfeiters, and producers of the finest wines have started tagging bottles to protect their brands.

Clive Coates, a wine critic, has praised Romanee-Conti as "the purest, more aristocratic and most intense example of pinot noir you could imagine". Author Roald Dahl wrote of it in more ecstatic terms, saying it was "equivalent to experiencing an orgasm at once in the mouth and nose".

Source: The Australian, 24 October 2013