A man who fought the seizure of two pricey bottles of wine at a B.C. border crossing has had his case dismissed by a federal judge.
The decision, handed down Wednesday by Justice William Pentney, came after 26-year-old Yucheng Su failed to declare the wine while crossing from Washington State into Surrey.
Su had made a trip from Canada to Renton, Wash., to visit his cousin and her new baby, who for a while, were unreachable due to COVID-19 travel restrictions. Su ordered the wine to his cousin's home and then returned with them on his way back to B.C.
On Nov. 12, 2021, Su approached the Peace Arch border crossing where he declared one pack of cigarettes and 13 bottles of wine worth an estimated US$1,487.50.
“Thirteen bottles of wine, one pack of cigarettes and no cannabis,” one border officer recalled Su saying in testimony to the court.
But when he hit the secondary inspection booth, a border officer opened his trunk and found two extra bottles of wine stored separately from those he had declared.
In an affidavit to the court, Su said the bottles were a gift from his cousin, that he had forgotten about them and he didn’t know what they were worth.
One, a 2012 Domaine de la Romanee-Conti Richebourg, was found in a side compartment in the back of the vehicle; the other, a 1996 Domaine de la Romanee-Conti La Tache, was found wrapped in Styrofoam in the back.
“It was subsequently determined that each bottle of wine was worth at least $5,000.00 CAD,” Pentney wrote in his ruling.
(Some wine collector sites currently price the two vintages at a combined $15,000.)
The border officer seized the two bottles of wine and held them as forfeit in accordance with federal law, said the judge.
Su claimed the seizure was “procedurally unfair and made in error” after a border “officer in training” failed to properly fill out custom documents. He petitioned the court to return the seized wine or provide monetary compensation.
But in his ruling, Pentney said the border officer's failure to follow certain Canada Border Service Agency policies does not undermine their credibility to provide evidence in other ways.
Pentney ruled that under the law Su had a “heavy burden” to disclose the goods he was importing.
“Simply put,” said the judge, “he failed to do so.”
Pentney dismissed Su’s attempt to recoup the wine, and ordered the man to pay $10,000 in legal fees.
