A shopper has broken the record for duty-free purchases at Paris’s Charles de Gaulle airport by splurging nearly 50,000 euros on six bottles of exclusive wine.

The shopper, who was identified only as “an Asian”, bought a bottle of Romanee Conti 1995, a Chateau Margaux 2003, two bottles of Chateau Lafitte 1982 and two bottles of Petrus 1980, worth a total of 49,905 euros ($66,000).

The airport did not say when the purchases had been made, but noted that high-quality wines “sell better at the end of the year”.

A 300-bottle collection of Chateau Lafite Rothschild has sold for almost $540,000 in Hong Kong, setting a world record price for a single wine lot auctioned this year.

The collection spanning 1981 to 2005 was knocked down for HK$4.2 million ($539,250) at Christie’s two-day Autumn wine sale.

The record price, below a HK$4.5 million pre-sale estimate, was “the highest value lot achieved at any wine auction worldwide this year,” Christie’s said.

For one French wine house, when traveling with valuable, vintage wines there is no wrapping bottles in socks and sweaters, cushioning them with towels and nestling them in suitcases.

For Cordier Mestrezat Grands Crus, prized wines travel in style, laid snugly in a custom-made Louis Vuitton carrying case that can house four bottles.

The specially commissioned wine travel case was showcased at Vinexpo in Bordeaux this week, to mark the French winemaker’s 125th anniversary.

Three bottles of Chateau Lafite’s 1869 vintage each sold for a record price of HK$1.8 million ($230,000) at a sale in Hong Kong last saturday.

All three were bought by the same Asian telephone bidder, said Sotheby’s, which offered almost 2,000 bottles of Lafite shipped directly from the cellars of the chateau in Pauillac, near Bordeaux.

The 1869s – the oldest bottles in a range of vintages that spanned 139 years – were each estimated to sell for between HK$40,000 and HK$60,000.

Concerns are growing in some wine industry circles that a few rogue Chinese wine traders may be mounting a wine scam, just as the 2009 Bordeaux futures sales are poised to begin, experts fear.

Fine wine merchant Bordeaux Index alleged that unscrupulous traders in Shanghai had hoodwinked private customers into ordering and paying for the 2009 vintage of legendary wines.

One of the great names in wine-making, Domaines Barons de Rothschild, said Sunday it plans to develop a vineyard in China to take advantage of growing interest in wine here.

Chateau Lafite has a very high reputation on China and has partnered with CITIC, China’s largest state-owned investment company on 62 acres of vines on a peninsula in eastern China’s Shandong province.

“I am very pleased to develop a vineyard in a country where the interest in fine wines is increasing every year.”