Expensive Wine

1787 Chateau Lafite | Article provided by http://www.cocktailsandwines.com

When an enterprising young man, James Christie opened his London auction in December 1766, his first auction consisted of the estate of a nobleman "deceased" containing "a large quantity of Madeira and high Flavour 's Claret. The records do not relate how much these delightfully described "high clarets Flavour'd" look, but the sale all made a grand total £ 175, it's a safe bet that if Christie had known that two hundred years later, in 1985, his now famous auction house would sell a bottle of wine for £ 105,000 or $ 160,000, he could hold a bottle or two to enrich his future heirs.

This bottle is a Bordeaux, Chateau Lafite 1787 and, according to the Guinness Book of Records, 18 years later, he is still world's most expensive bottle of wine. Its great age alone would have guaranteed a good price, but it has its particular appeal, especially to American collectors, and ensured the record price tag were the initials Th.J. etched into the glass.

The bottle had belonged to Thomas Jefferson, third president of the United States and one of the most revered founding fathers. A philosopher, scientist and statesman, the aristocratic Jefferson was also an avid oenophile. When he was ambassador to France, he spent much time visiting the vineyards of Bordeaux and Burgundy, buying wine for his own collection and on behalf of his friends at home. It is also associated with two other very pricy wine, a 1775 Sherry ($ 43.500) and the most expensive white wine ever sold, a Chacteau d'Yquem 1787 ($ 56,588).

Of course, none of these wines are made to drink now, it is rare that even the best Bordeaux to last over 50 years and 200 years exceeds the limit of any wine. The look of these high-priced bottles of vinegar, wine and other of his kind, is purely in the joy of collecting, not to consume. The 1787 Lafite was bought specifically as a piece of Jefferson memories, not as a bottle of wine, and he now resides in the Forbes collection in New York. These wines are a bit like the old stamps, something to be collected, horded but never used, and they command such high prices not because of their usefulness, but because of their rarity and therefore appeal to collectors.

Compile a list of the most expensive bottles in the wine is not as simple as it first appears. How can you compare the price paid for a double magnum - four bottles that - with one bottle? Have you rate on the same scale or do you divide the price of the large bottle by four to determine the price of single-bottle?

Thus, rather than compiling a league table, we determined 11 distinct categories, then asked the most expensive bottle in each category, a very interesting research and it turned out to be. One of the first things you notice is that all the wines on the list have been auctioned off, because, except in rare cases, the seller knows that the publicity surrounding a special bottle, and the heated atmosphere of 'tender, often results in prices even higher.

bottle the world's most expensive wine that could actually be drunk today is also the most expensive wine ever sold in America, a Montrachet 1978 from Domaine de la Romanee-Conti that was hammered by Sotheby's in New York in 2001. The lot of seven bottles collected 167,500 dollars, or $ 23,929 per bottle. This is an extraordinary price for white wine, even in the rarefied world of wine collecting. What happened that two great collectors were bidding against each other and got carried away, each refusing to yield under.