Auctioning wine -- a political act
Only in France can selling wine be construed as a
political act, but that is what the Socialist mayor of Paris, Bertrand
Delanoë, is being accused of by auctioning off most of City Hall’s
“grands crus,” the finest wines accumulated during the tenure of his
center- right predecessor, Jacques Chirac.
Only in France can selling wine be construed as a political act, but that is what the Socialist mayor of Paris, Bertrand Delanoë, is being accused of by auctioning off most of City Hall’s “grands crus,” the finest wines accumulated during the tenure of his center- right predecessor, Jacques Chirac.
The municipality’s collection is kept below the fanciful Hôtel de Ville, on the Right Bank of the Seine. It was started when Chirac became mayor in 1977 and eventually grew to 10,000 bottles, stored in a state-of-the-art vaulted cellar six meters, or 21 feet, underground, where the humidity is kept at 87 percent and the temperature never varies from 12 degrees Celsius (54 Fahrenheit).
Chirac used the collection to impress guests, pulling the cork on bottles of Château Petrus for President George H.W. Bush, Leonid Brezhnev and Pope John Paul II. Bernard Bled, then Chirac’s chief of staff, says the mayor’s office annually consumed hundreds of bottles of fine wine at fancy dinners. “Drinking even 1,000 bottles a year is not enormous,” Bled said Thursday.
But times have changed. Delanoë entertains less, and when he does, it is usually at Champagne-and-hors d’oeuvre receptions. The city’s independent auditor reported last year that the mayor’s office now serves only about 30 bottles of fine wine a year.
Maratier, the wine expert, who arranges periodic auctions of wine from private cellars, said the City Hall auction was unique because all of the wines are from top classifications and have been stored under optimum conditions without being moved. He has estimated the market value of the wine to be sold at €550,000 but said that based on the interest that the auction has received, he believes it could bring in as much as €750,000.
There is some conviction that the city’s budget will now focus a bit more on projects benefiting citizens rather than politicians, although a lot of profit is to be had from the apparently smart wine collecting by Chirac. Typical short-sightedness of nouveau politicians. In fact, the collection would have probably doubled in value every few years essentially paying for itself. Now they’ll have nothing but beer and Beaujolais and the new French vegan tea-totaler lifestyle. Kind of like Air France: downhill.
So where did most of the wine go? Who were the bidders? The Chinese! Related story here.
Posted: Sat - October 21, 2006 at 05:35 AM