The body of a Spanish nobleman, the Marquis de Larios, is to be exhumed after an orphaned trumpeter claimed he was the heir to his wealthy dynasty and entitled to a share in the famous family gin company.

A judge has ordered tests to be carried out on the corpse of Jose Antonio Larios Franco, whose father founded the Larios gin brand in the 1920s, after Jose Collado, a trumpeter in an orchestra in Marbella, claimed to be his illegitimate son.

Mr Collado claimed he was the result of an affair between the marquis and one of the cooks working at his ancestral stately home and hopes that DNA taken from the exhumed remains will prove that he is the rightful heir to the gin fortune. When the fourth marquis died suddenly in 1954 without a natural heir, the title was passed to his step-son.

For the last ten years Mr Collado has been fighting a legal battle to be recognised as the rightful heir to the Larios title and fortune.

Magistrate Maria Dolores Escoto has ordered the exhumation, this Friday, of the grave of the marquis from the family plot at the Finca le Dehesa de los Llanos near Albacete to “carry out DNA testing with a view to determining biological parentage”.