(Bloomberg) - When most people get a bad bottle of wine, they send it back. When billionaire collector William Koch concluded the vintage wines he bought at auction were counterfeit, he made a federal case out of it. Koch purchased what he thought were French wines from the Bordeaux and Burgundy regions, some dating to Napoleonic times and the Belle Epoque, he alleged in a 2007 complaint filed in federal court in New York.He claimed that Eric Greenberg, the founder and chairman emeritus of Scient Corp., who’d consigned the wines, defrauded him. 

Koch initially said 36 bottles that he bought at New York- based Zachys Wine and Liquor Inc. in 2004 and 2005 for about $500,000 were counterfeit. Last week, he pared back his claims to 24 bottles for which he spent about $350,000.  While the founder of Oxbow Carbon & Minerals has filed other lawsuits over alleged counterfeit wine sales, the case against Greenberg is the first to go to trial, with opening arguments scheduled for today in Manhattan before a jury of six men and two women.