Page 74 of Perfect Strangers

‘In the wardrobe?’ queried Josh.

He went to take a look. Sure enough, there were two bottles on the shelf and a further box of the stuff by Nick’s shoes.

‘I know next to nothing about wine, but as our friend Nick was not a man to scrimp on the luxuries, I’m guessing this will be half-decent.’

‘It is,’ confirmed Sophie, taking the bottle off him. ‘This is a Romanée-Conti, one of the best red wines money can buy.’

Josh looked up in surprise. ‘You know about that stuff?’

‘Chelsea girls can’t afford to look stupid at dinner parties,’ she said tartly.

She bent down and opened the brown box on the floor. It was full of bottles with the same mottled label.

‘That’s strange,’ she said, picking up another bottle. ‘More Romanée-Conti. Loads of it.’

Josh shrugged.

‘As you say, he always liked the finer things in life.’

‘But this wine is vintage and very rare. You’d be lucky to find one bottle, let alone twelve.’

She twisted the bottle round to show him the label.

‘Look what it says here.’

‘Appellation Romanée-Conti Contrôlée?’ read Josh, a confused look on his face. ‘It’s all Greek to me.’

‘The AOC is just a standard phrase to show where the bottle originated. In this case, it’s Romanée-Conti in Burgundy.’

‘You do know your stuff,’ said Josh, but Sophie shook her head.

‘Actually it doesn’t really matter what it means; what’s funny is the word “contrôlée” – look. It’s missing the accent on the first “e”.’

‘So?’

‘Well, it’s wrong. A top vineyard like this wouldn’t get something like that wrong.’ She picked up the first bottle Josh had found in the wardrobe. ‘Look, this one’s right. It’s got the accent in the right place.’

‘The ones in the box are fake,’ said Josh slowly.

‘Fake?’ She’d heard mention of counterfeit wine on her wine-tasting course but wasn’t sure it actually existed.

Josh nodded. ‘It’s big business. Extremely profitable and relatively low-risk if you sell to the right people. There’s a lot of rich, gullible folk out there who have heard of the big, impressive vineyards but know nothing about their taste.’

‘So how does it work?’

Josh puffed out his cheeks.

‘I don’t know a great deal about it. One way is to find empty bottles that once held expensive vintage wine. There’s a brisk black market in empty Château Margaux and Château Pétrus bottles. You could find a corrupt sommelier in a restaurant to sell you their empties. Or buy or steal from private individuals. You pour any old crap inside them. Cork them up. Sell them on as an investment and hope they don’t open one for a few years, by which point you’ve scarpered.’

He examined Nick’s bottles more closely.

‘Or you do a wholesale fake. The bottle, the label, cork, the wine inside. I think that is what has happened here. Nick said he had a big job in France. Plus it explains why he was in London at some flashy party.’

‘He was drumming up business?’

Josh nodded.

‘He wanted to offload his wine on the nouveau riche who wouldn’t know a Romanée-Conti from Ribena.’