Fifth of wine sold worldwide is 'fake' The fraudster, Armand Aramian, was found guilty of selling counterfeit labels of Mouton Rothschild wine on eBay, the internet auction site. Since 1945, the prestigious Grand Cru has commissioned renowned artists to illustrate the labels for its vintages, which are highly popular with collectors. The scam was exposed thanks to a Europe-wide investigation by specialist officers working for six different police forces. They found that a so far unnamed Italian father and son were producing counterfeit bottles of Romanée-Conti, a Burgundy Pinot Noire, described by one seminal guide as "one of the greatest wines of the world and the most perfect as well as the most expensive of Burgundy." The counterfeiters managed to make more than £1.8 million selling their fake produce across Europe, including the UK. Investigators said the design on bottles were "near perfect" and that many customers were clearly fooled. This month, Laurent Ponsot, a Burgundy winemaker and famed forgery hunter, estimated that 80 per cent of auctioned wines allegedly coming from Burgundy's most prestigious domains, including his own, are fakes. Mr Ponsot famously unmasked Rudy Kurniawan, an Indonesian collector said to possess "arguably the greatest cellar on Earth" as an alleged wine fraudster, after Mr Kurniawan tried to auction Ponsot's Clos-St-Denis vintages dating back decades before the domain started producing them. Decanter said the scale of alleged forgeries found when the FBI raided Kurniawan's premises last year may "ultimately go down as the wine crime of the century." His trial is set for next month.