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A community portal about Wine with blogs, videos, and photos. According to Wikipedia.org: Wine is an alcoholic beverage produced by the fermentation of the juice of fruits, usually grapes. Although a number of other fruits - such as plum, elderberry and blackcurrant - may also be fermented, grapes are naturally chemically balanced to normally ferment completely without requiring extra sugars, acids, enzymes or other nutrients. Non-grape wines are called fruit wine or country wine. Other products made from starch based materials, such as barley wine, rice wine, are more similar to beers. The English word wine and its equivalents in other languages are protected by law in many jurisdictions.

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Time to pop the cork in wine auction world?

From: reuters.com

NEW YORK (Reuters Life!) - In perhaps another sign of a recovering economy, millions of dollars worth of wines and spirits sold at three different auctions in New York over the weekend.

At Christie's almost $3 million worth of wines and fine spirits went under the hammer, including the 1964 Bowmore Trilogy -- three bottles of single malt Scotch from the distillery on Islay, a Hebridean island off the west coast of Scotland. They fetched $21,600.

"I'm absolutely delighted with the result," said Andrew Rankin, master blender for Bowmore Whisky, after the sale on Saturday.

"When we first did this, back in 1995, the set sold for $150. Now, that set is worth $15,000."

To put that return in perspective, the Dow Jones Industrial average closed at 2,544.80 on December 31 1995. It ended trade on Friday at 10,270.47.

Over at Sotheby's, a selection of wines direct from Bodegas Vega Sicilia, Spain's iconic 145-year-old winery in the north of the country, sold for $1.09 million -- nearly triple its pre-sale estimate of $350,000.

A collection of magnums for each vintage of Vega Sicilia Unico from 1960 through 1995 sold for $102,850 -- five times the pre-sale estimate of $20,000. The winner, identified only as a South American collector, was declared after a spirited bidding battle from contenders in the room, on the telephone, and online.

As one collector, who did not wish to be identified, said: "You're paying not only for the wine here; you're paying for the provenance. It's direct from the winery. It doesn't get any better than that."

At Zachy's, spirited bidding continued with collectors paying $55,200 for an Imperial (six-liter bottle) of Chateau Lafite Rothschild 1959 and $40,800 for a dozen bottles of La Tache Domaine de la Romanee Conti 1990.

Domaine de la Romanee-Conti is an estate in Burgundy, France, considered one of the world's greatest wine producers with its wine also among the world's most expensive.

But prices generally have not returned to pre-fall 2008 levels if the weekend's auctions are compared to sales 18 months ago.

One winning bidder at Zachy's got a relative bargain when they paid $57,600 for six bottles of Hermitage La Chapelle Jaboulet 1961. In November 2007, a dozen bottles of the same vintage sold at a Christie's auction for $252,000.

The Liv-Ex 100 Fine Wine Index, the industry's leading bench mark, was up 12.9 percent for the first 10 months of the year to stand at 234.25 in October. That is up from its January low of 207.42.

(Reporting by Leslie Gevirtz; Editing by Belinda Goldsmith)

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