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”.

One of 600 bottles of Romanée-Conti Wine from 1945 that were produced during the end of World War II, set a new world record price for a 750ml bottle of red burgundy at Christie’s auction sale in Geneva on May 17.

The legendary vintage of the bottle was estimated between $56,000 to $78,000, and was sold to a private U.S. collector for a whopping $123,919.

Petrus, Romanee-Conti, Chateau d’Yquem — wines coveted by connoisseurs, and targeted by counterfeiters.

According to French wine professionals, a handful of rare and fine wines face the same threat from fraud as luxury handbags and designer sunglasses.

Trafficking in fake wine has “always existed a little, but it’s definitely amplified with the rising prices of fine wines”.

One Beijing-based billionaire has splashed out a record $500,000 on 27 bottles of red wine, London-based Antique Wine Company said on Saturday.

The anonymous Chinese entrepreneur bought a mix of vintages of Romanee Conti, a Burgundy wine and considered to be among the world’s most exclusive with only 450 cases produced each year.[...]

“It is the highest price that has ever been achieved for a single lot,” Managing Director Stephen Williams of the London- based Antique Wine Company told Reuters on Saturday.

“I don’t think he has bought this as an investment — he has bought it to drink,” he added. “The fine wine industry is completely immune from the global credit crunch.”