How vineyard villains play on the vanity of collectors

A tarantula, sharks, piranhas, a high-powered laser aimed at the groin, several hungry alligators, more sharks and a tall man with metal teeth: when millionaire villains sought revenge on James Bond, they certainly spared no expense.

It is perhaps understandable. From the standpoint - or rather, the sitting-down-in-a-black-swivel-chair-with-white-cat point - of a paranoid nouveau riche megalomaniac, agent 007 was an insufferable snob. Listening to him bang on about Bollinger '55 or the correct temperature at which to serve sake must have been infuriating. However, I still wonder whether Dr No, and Messrs Largo, Blofeld, Goldfinger, Big (aka Dr Kananga), Stromberg and Drax - respectively - might have had more success had they used Commander Bond's elitism against him.

What better way to crush a crushing wine bore than to list recent bids for his priceless Bolly vintage: only £79 a half bottle on certain websites. Or point out that his Vesper martini is made with Gordon's gin: on offer for £14 at Tesco.

Implausible? No more so than the plot of Skyfall. In fact, both Bond film producer Barbara Broccoli and the world's wealthiest bacchanalians should be aware that a similar scenario has just played out for real. Last month, a New York courtroom heard how a millionaire criminal mastermind humiliated his oenophile nemeses by selling them some of the most convincing and expensive fake wines ever produced. He even had a quite good Bond villain nickname: Dr Conti (aka Mr 47).

In real life, and the US prison where he will now spend the best part of 10 years, Dr Conti is better known as Rudy Kurniawan, the 37-year-old scion of a rich Indonesian family who came to study in California in the 1990s. Shortly afterwards, he was studying little else but fine wine auction catalogues - and the bottom of some very expensive glasses. Reports from the time suggest at one point, he was spending $1m a month, most extravagantly on 1947 burgundies from the domain of Romanee-Conti - earning himself his twin nicknames and near instant respect from wine writers. According to New York magazine, Robert Parker, the world's most powerful wine critic, said he was "a very sweet and generous man".

So sweet and generous, it seems, that he decided to make more rare wines available to rich collectors ... by blending known vintages with relatively cheap plonk in his kitchen, pouring it back into old bottles and creating counterfeit labels.

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But discovery of these illogical chronologies came too late for the seven wealthy connoisseurs who had paid nearly $50m to Dr Conti for his Grand Vins de Kitchen Table - among them billionaire industrialist Bill Koch. Kurniawan has been ordered to pay $28.4m in restitution, on top of a $20m penalty.

For wealth managers and their clients, it is arguably a cautionary tale, especially as both are more likely to consider wine an alternative asset class. A few years ago, Sebastian Dovey of wealth management research group Scorpio Partnership observed: "More and more banks are getting involved in this space, because typically this is where clients are most animated and engaged … I mean, who really wants to talk Sharpe ratios all day long, except the banker? Most people would much rather debate the consequences of a bad winter to the Merlot grape."

No doubt Goldman Sachs bankers were checking meteorological history only this summer, when this trend reached its natural conclusion and a wealthy client sought a loan secured on bottles of fine wine - one of them a 1929 Romanee-Conti.

To protect themselves, clients and managers need to acknowledge that fine wine markets are unlike any other, suggests Oliver Gregson, head of HSBC Private Bank's investment group in the UK. He warns there is now "a greater potential for such fraud in a market that overall appears to be riddled with inefficiencies, is frequently opaque and can be illiquid, risky and volatile".

A perfect scenario for Mr Bond.

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What Matthew is reading

Reports that the German government is reverting to old technology to prevent internet surveillance made the Enigma cipher machine sold by Christie's recently for £50,000 look rather good value.

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