Rudy Kurniawan's 'real' collection up for auction

Rudy Kurniawan may be doing time for selling counterfeit wines, but his collection contained some genuine bottles that will shortly go under the hammer.

Starting tomorrow, Kurniawan's private cellar of around 4,700 bottles will be auctioned online by the US Marshals Service (UMS) over a seven-day period. A second auction will take place for week from December 1.

The proceeds from the auction will be used to "compensate those who were victims of his fraud," said UMS' assistant programme manager Jason Martinez. Kurniawan was sentenced to 10 years in jail in 2014, after being convicted at the end of 2013, and is currently serving his sentence at Taft Correctional Institute in California.

Some of the wines for sale include a 1970 Romanée-Conti, a lot of three French bottles from Chateau Haut Plantey and Hospices de Nuits, and a lot of six bottles from Aves Riverbed Vineyard in California and Gevrey-Chambertin in France.

The wines up for auction have been appraised and authenticated by appraisals specialist Stephanie Reeves, who in turn enlisted the aid of noted wine experts including Michael Egan who was the principal witness in the Kurniawan trial.

"Egan inspected the bottles with the most risk of being counterfeit, and he uncovered a quantity of counterfeit bottles that were removed from the collection being sold," said USM in a statement.

The wine was being stored by Kurniawan in a California wine storage facility, according to the agency, which believes that much of it was destined to be used in the production of fake high-end wines.