Tue 14 Mar 2006
How much would you pay for your favourite bottle of wine? £50, £100? or may be a $500 for the top wine? One wine connoisseur has just bought what is thought to be the most expensive bottle of white wine in the world at US$100,000 (£55,000): a Château Yquem 1787.Â
When the grapes for this wine were harvested George Washington was the first President of the United States, the French Revolution was imminent, George III was King of England and James Watt was developing the steam engine.
The valuable bottle was acquired by a UK-based company from a private collector in France.
The interesting thing is that no-one has tasted it, but a number of interesting things come to light. Any wine will slowly evaporate in the bottle, and hence over the years the levels will have been “topped up” - like taking your car into the garage, Bordeaux chateaux will “service” your bottles of fine wine - re-corking, topping-up and often supplying a new label with a certificate of authentication. If you have old or rare bottles of wine it will be important to have some evidence of its provenance (where it came from) and how it has been stored. (It is hard to believe that during this “topping-up” someone was not tempted to try a little sip - for quality control purposes of course! )
May 20th, 2006 at 11:21 pm
WOW! I heard rumours of wine this expensive but knowing it is true shocks me!
The first thing I started wondering is a bottle of Canadian Wine would ever be worth that much. In fact after this I might put that question on my Canadian Wine page.
June 22nd, 2006 at 1:50 pm
this is not the most expensive bottle ever sold, i dont know who is doing the research behind the Yquem bottle, but maybe they should stop drinking. just search online and you’ll find that a wine once owned by Thomas Jefferson sold for 160,000 us dollars. duh! hiccup!