Scientists use carbon-dating to check wine vintages: study

The government is selling off its vintage French wine collection for £5,000 a bottle in a bid to offset the costs of its expensive wine cellar. The government wine cellar, located in the basement of Lancaster House near Buckingham Palace, is used to provide wine for visiting dignitaries at 200 or more events a year.

If the biggest selling point for a new beer is the bottle that it comes in, what does that say about the beer itself? There’s no doubt that the labels on beer, wine, and liquor influence our buying decisions. Vodka is supposedly tasteless, so the main justification for buying a top-shelf brand would appear to be that then you can show off the top-shelf label. If many drinkers were honest, they’d admit that they often pick out wines for no other reason than the bottles feature cute animals or a funny name.

If the biggest selling point for a new beer is the bottle that it comes in, what does that say about the beer itself? There’s no doubt that the labels on beer, wine, and liquor influence our buying decisions. Vodka is supposedly tasteless, so the main justification for buying a top-shelf brand would appear to be that then you can show off the top-shelf label. If many drinkers were honest, they’d admit that they often pick out wines for no other reason than the bottles feature cute animals or a funny name.

MONTREAL — Efforts by successive Quebec governments to find more revenue sources over the years have contributed to an unintended consequence on the store shelves of the province’s liquor monopoly: the near-extinction of cheap wine.

An amateur wine group paid a record 57,000 euros ($77,000) Saturday for a 237-year-old bottle of wine from France's eastern Jura region at a local wine festival auction."Finally, yellow wine has hit the big leagues," said wine festival founder Bernard Badoz of Jura's trademark beverage."To sell a bottle for 57,000 euros is not crazy," he said of the 1773 bottle that came from a Louis XV-era vine and grapes harvested during the reign of Louis XVI.