Counterfeits, smashing, slashing, chugging — sipped & spit
SIPPED and SMASHED: Lafite empties
After tasting older vintages of collectible wines before an auction, the bottles are routinely smashed. Why? An empty bottle of Lafite 1982 fetches $1,500. [CNN]
SIPPED: counterfeit bottle
William Koch, the billionaire wine collector, bought a bottle of 1870 Lafite from a Christie’s auction for $4,200, discovered it was fake, and sued the auction house. A judge has now thrown out the suit, saying that Koch knew the bottle was fake before bidding. Here’s hoping anyone else bidding on it also knew! [Bloomberg]
CHUGGED: Box wine up 18% last year. [PR web]
CUT: subsidies
The Texas wine industry has received $4.2 million in state funds the past two years. However, the subsidy is likely to be cut to zero. Fun fact: there are estimated to be 1.3 million wine tourists a year in Texas. [Dallas Morning News]
DAMAGED: some tentative information on the state of Japan’s sake breweries. [sake-world.com]
On March 22nd, 2011 at 12:29 pm ,Matt Wilson wrote:
This image has not been licensed for use here. Please remove it or you will be invoiced.
Cheers
On March 22nd, 2011 at 1:32 pm ,Dr. Vino wrote:
Matt – So glad you keep up with the site. Since you had given me permission previously, I thought it was okay to use a reduced size, crop again. Apparently not. The image has been removed.
On March 22nd, 2011 at 1:41 pm ,Matt Wilson wrote:
Cheers, a one off use does not mean rights signed over. Thanks for removing it.
Cheers
Matt