Kurniawan trial: 'This wine cannot exist', winemaker Ponsot tells court

(Decanter) - Laurent Ponsot and Domaine de la Romanee-Conti's Aubert de Villaine have told jurors in the trial of alleged wine fraudster Rudy Kurniawan of their shock at seeing wines supposedly from their own estates that should not have existed.

State prosecutors called on both Ponsot and de Villaine to give their opinions on various wines presented to court and also to talk about their first-hand experiences of dealing with Kurniawan, who is charged with selling and attempting to sell around US$1.3m-worth of counterfeit wine.

Up first, Ponsot described how he became concerned in April 2008, when he received an email from a friend about bottles of Clos Saint-Denis 1945 from his family's estate that were imminently up for auction in New York.

'The Clos Saint-Denis is an appellation that we started in 1982,' he told jurors. When shown bottles of Clos Saint-Denis from previous decades, including from the 1959 and 1962 vintages, he added, 'this cannot exist. It's obvious.'

After hearing of the auction, Ponsot said he jumped straight on a plane, arrived at the sale ten minutes after it started, and persuaded the auction house, Acker Merrall & Condit, to withdraw the wines - which it did.

In what was the third straight day of evidence for the prosecution, he also testified that a 1949 Clos de la Roche label was fake, but he said 'it's very close'.

After the 2008 auction, Ponsot said he started an investigation of his own. He met Kurniawan in person on a number of occasions. On one occasion, at dinner, he said Kurniawan presented at least one wine that Ponsot said he knew was fake.