(RN) - From time to time I mention the value toward collecting and trading wines. I came across a valuable piece regarding counterfeit wines and what the big names in French wine are prepared to do about the illegal representation of their wine with fake and forged labels. 

Much of this interest in fake wines comes from the trial of Rudy Kurnaiwan. It was Tuesday, May 13, that New York state prosecutors made their arguments on the sentencing to be at the maximum of 14 years in prison. The prosecutors made this argument not because of the counterfeiting of Romanée-Conti labels, but more to the fact that millions of dollars of worthless wine with counterfeit labels are in an untold number of private cellars around the U.S., their owners believing fully that they are genuine wines from Romanée-Conti, the world's most valuable Pinot Noir from the Côte de Nuits sub-region of Burgundy, France.

You may remember an article I wrote last month about the Hong Kong wine auctions this spring that showed how valuable Romanée-Conti is to today's wine traders. That particular label brought in $7.2 million in the whole auction with one lot, a six-bottle lot of 1990 vintage that sold for $149,199.