[wine] Caveat emptor at auction (and elsewhere)

The following item by Serena Sutcliffe MW, head of Sotheby's international wine department, appears in Tom Stevenson's "Wine Report 2007": "The burgeoning mystery of the fine-wine world is the unprecedented availability of great old wines ('trophy' wines) and their ability to taste increasingly young. I am going to be brutal: most of these 'miracles' seem to emanate from Europe, to our eternal shame, and most are then sold (and sold and sold) in America and Asia. However, they do appear in the UK -- recently it was Cheval Blanc 1961 with the Catalan flag on the cork. "Thirty years ago, these wines had almost disappeared. Things like Mouton 1945, Cheval Blanc 1947, Lafleur 1947, Margaux 1900, Petrus in a variety of vintages, Latour 1961, all frequently in large formats, Yquem 1921, and, from the previous century, 19th-century Lafite -- the usual litany (plus Romanee-Conti and La Tache in various sizes and years, plus more recent Henri Jayer burgundies) -- were very rarely found, usually in old family cellars in the region of origin and in a few old country estates in Europe. Now, they are made to order and two a penny. One recorked trophy bottle becomes 100 -- cloning at its most efficient. They are generally bought by less experienced collectors who rightly wish to 'experience' these mythical wines. They mostly taste quite good and are pronounced 'amazingly youthful' (very accurate). Some are bought to impress, or as an 'investment,' and then they are sold on and scattered even more widely. "Genuine old wines are not powerful, lusty, robust, and consistent. They are often light-textured, ephemeral, very inconsistent, and aging every day. For example, the fabulous old Montroses I tasted recently, direct from the chateau, showed more age than they did 10 years ago. Real old wines are often lingering, lacy, ethereal, magic; they are also often volatile, acid, and mushroomy. The surgically altered monsters out on the block are great brutes that never age. They have trout lips and scars under the hairline. I do not like them, nor those making fortunes trading in them. This is a blot on the wine trade I knew and loved."