British wine lovers have been duped into buying fake Romanée-Conti at £7000 a bottle.  Approximately 400 bottles of the counterfeit red Burgundy, with apparently not bad replica labels, have been sold around the world amounting to around £1,800,000 in dodgy sales – ouch!

Dating back 1500 years and producing such elixirs as ‘La Tâche’, the Domaine de Romanée-Conti (DRC) is a world famous estate located in Vosne-Romanée, an area within the Côte de Nuits in Burgundy.  The eminent estate uses only a tiny proportion of their best Grand Cru land to produce their top wines, which translates to about 3500-4000 bottles typically per release.  Earlier this year these prestige and luxury wines were officially named ‘most expensive Burgundy in the world’ after 3 bottles of their 1990 Grand Cru Vintage sold for a staggering £42,000!!

velvet and satin in bottle (Archbishop of Paris 1780)’

With so little produced, it didn’t take DRC too long to highlight the dastardly deed to the police.  5 forces later, the investigation has led to the arrest of an Italian father and son in their homeland.

Morale of the story, if you are a true connoisseur and have the finances to purchase wine at £7,000 a bottle, get some advice from a professional who can confirm/check the provenance.  If you’re one of the folk who only buys top investment wines as a status symbol to open and add coke to, stick to coke and give the rest of the money to charity!  Here’s a great one that improve peoples lives and lasts a good deal longer!