Wine With a Phony Pedigree Prompts Federal Investigation

The wine bore the proud label of 1986 Montrachet from Domaine de la Romanee-Conti, one of the world’s rarest and--at $350 a bottle--most expensive vintages. About five cases, more than $20,000 worth, were sold to a Japanese buyer by a Southern California wine dealer.

But the deal went sour after the wine’s pedigree proved phony, and the sale has prompted a federal investigation.

Jack Daniels of Wilson-Daniels Ltd. in St. Helena, Calif., official importer of Domaine de la Romanee-Conti wines, said the bogus wine carried a label saying, “Appellation Romanee-Conti Controlee,” a designation that may appear only on red wine. But the Montrachet is white.

That detail aside, the label was a respectable fraud, said Daniels, who examined a faxed copy of it. “If you just glanced at it,” he said, “it looked real.”

Daniels said he was told that the buyer’s money was refunded after he complained about the label.

Deepening the mystery, Daniels added, the buyer said he shipped the wine back to the merchant, but it “disappeared somewhere between Japan and Los Angeles.”

A spokesman for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, a branch of the Treasury Department, confirmed the probe but would identify neither buyer nor seller.