Romanée Conti

The most counterfeited wine and yet a winery that fights hard
against counterfeiting!

You certainly have already read front pages like this:

But like that as well:

 How they fight against this ?

We read a lot about one bottle of Romanée Conti that has been sold at
an outrageous price. Recently, on October this year, the most
expensive bottle in the history, a 1945 Romanée Conti for the modest
price of 558.000 $.

Such a shameless amount easily attracts many counterfeiters for a

product so simple and cheap to fake.

As much as counterfeiting can be easily identified, particularly in

countries like China, in Europe the methods are more and more
sophisticated

But let’s give us some funny time finding out how Rudy Kurniawan,
aka. “Dr Conti” the most important counterfeiter in the world has
been recently identified! He actually tried to sell some bottles of “Clos-
Saint-Denis” of the years 1945 to 1971 of Laurent Ponsot winery!
Okay, so far so good. But not quite, as we know that Laurent Ponsot’s
winery only exists since 1982.
To be honest most of the time you would not be able to know the name
of your Romanée Conti’s seller, because they know what to expect from it: being
blacklisted by the domain Romanée Conti. No more Romanée Conti for you. Because
indeed they also fight against speculation and for that reason ask the customer to
consume the bottle and not to resale it.

As you certainly noticed, we speak about Romanée Conti as a winery and as a wine as
well.

Indeed the wine Romanée Conti is only produced by the eponymous winery: called so a
vintage monopoly. The Burgundian winery produces 8 different types of wines with a
“Grand Cru” designation (the most prestigious one in Burgundy) and some “1er Cru” (2nd
most prestigious one)

NB: The order of the ranking of the designations is not the same in every wine-growing
region. In wine-growing region of Bordeaux for instance, the designation “1er Cru” is the
most prestigious one according Emperor Napoleon III’s classification.

Speaking of royalty, some story to excel in high society: did you know for what use Louis
XIV’s doctor prescribed Romanée Conti? Against his king’s stomach ache. Without a
doubt approved by the then WHO !

And last but not least the wine Romanée Conti takes its name from the prince Conti
who bought the parcel in 1760 from the Romanée property. He gave his name to this
wine, because the only place you could taste some was at his table.

Nowadays it is about 5 500 bottles of Romanée Conti that are produced every year from
a 1,81 hectare parcel (very small).

Dream on !

During decades, the Romanée Conti was not sold individually. Buying a whole case with
the other wines of the property, between 12 and 15 bottles, was the only way to buy the
Romanée Conti. However, they gave up on this system that put the other bottles in the
background and that is the reason why they now only sell it individually.

As a private customer, even with a large amount of money you would hardly be able to
be even simply registered on the waiting list of the producer to become a customer.

That’s the way it is. Because in fact, Aubert de Villaine co-director of the “Domaine de la
Romanée-Conti” prefers to sell his wine to great restaurants particularly, for that is the
best way to be appreciated and shared properly.

Therefore, he is fully struggling against counterfeiting. In addition to a restricted

waiting list, their policy is to follow as much as possible the bottle from the delivery to
the end-user (a number on the bottle acts as reference). Be aware that even the greatest
restaurant must destroy the bottle after consumption in such a way that it is not
misused because filling an empty bottle of Romanée Conti with inferior wine is a classic
way the counterfeit this “Grand cru”.

As the exportation of the wine industry is the second most profitable sector in France,
the French government obviously fight as well against these counterfeiting channels,
which represent a large loss of income from the VAT.

“Yes, we fight for quality!” Not quite. At the same time, some European regulations
allowed a 85/15 rule in France. That is, today you might produce a 2009 vintage wine
with 85% of the 2009 vintage and 15% of the 2010 vintage and still get the 2010 vintage
on the bottle without any details of the actual mix. The same rule goes for the grape: you
can actually get 15% of cabernet sauvignon in a so-called 100% merlot bottle. Certainly
promoted as a way to soften the bitterness of some grape or vintage for example, but it
might as well be the trees hiding a way to use the unsold 15% by 15%.

Don’t look too offended! This rule exists for a long time in the other countries and
French regulation on wine is still the strictest in the world due to tradition and lobby.

Anyway you can still rely on the Doamine de la Romanée Conti for quite long time
before having to worry about the quality !

Cheers !