Word: wining
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Soon after leading the first European crossing of the Blue Mountains, west of Sydney, explorer Gregory Blaxland was back on his New South Wales farm, tending his vines. By 1822 he had sufficient confidence in his winemaking skills to submit a quarter-pipe (about 37 gal.) of red wine for assessment by the London-based Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce. The society's judges awarded him a silver medal--and five years later a gold medal--for a wine they described with tepid enthusiasm as having "much the odor and flavor of ordinary claret...
Blaxland was a colorful pioneer, but the business he started in Australia has become famed for producing wine that's not a cheap facsimile of other nations' wine but a unique, hardly ordinary invention. While Australia's wine matches the best in the world in technical expertise, there is something special about the taste of the country's top blends that has made it an irreplaceable flavor in many of the world's great wine cellars. This week Sotheby's and Christie's will conduct two of the largest wine auctions in history, each boasting impressive lots of the famous...
...years after Blaxland's first endeavors, the development of Australia's wine industry was steady but unremarkable. But the past decade has brought a renaissance. Partly it's been spurred by domestic growth: though historically not big wine consumers, Australians now drink an average of 26 bottles of table wine a year--more than any other English-speaking nation, although less than a third of the average Frenchman's needs. But the real growth has come overseas, where inexpensive (less than $30) Australian wines are hailed for richness, approachability and reliability--characteristics that put them on a footing with good...
When could you ever imagine decanting a $12,000 bottle of 188-year-old Chateau d'Yquem? What night could possibly be special enough to justify that kind of $2,000-a-glass indulgence? Well, the wine gurus at Sotheby's and Christie's, auction houses to the kind of people who can afford $200 sips, think New Year's Eve 1999 is probably about as likely an occasion as will ever come along. So this week they're uncorking two of the biggest wine auctions in history. The headline grabber is the Sotheby's auction, which features more than...
...wine collection is any indication, one can only wonder what must be in this euro-aesthete's art collection. Among the bottles up for bid this week are great trophy wines such as an 1811 Chateau Lafite and a 1945 Chateau Mouton Rothschild, as well as some of the finest and rarest young wines--bottles that an investor can bet will collect a premium at the year 3000 auctions. Just paging through the Sotheby's catalog (it's available online at www.sothebys.com is enough to moisten oenophilic palates. One evident specialty of the collector was assembling "vertical" collections...