Wines & Spirits

While Thai and Chinese businessmen splashed out on bottles of Pomerol 61 and Romanee-Conti 85 in the years leading up to the crash of the Tiger economies in the late 1990s, Japanese captains of industry were impressing their corporate friends with equally expensive bottles of Scotch, which they would crack open after work and down in one sitting.

...but it's still bad for you US: HOT news from health-conscious America. After years of campaigning from pro-winers, the US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms has agreed to allow the words DO CONSULT YOUR DOCTOR ABOUT THE BENEFICIAL EFFECTS OF DRINKING WINE to be added to the back label, as well as the statutory health warning. So now it’s official. Not only is wine bad for you, but it’s good for you as well.

UK: FOR the moment at least the great international wine auctioneering machine grinds on serenely enough with lottage selling rates routinely at levels of 90 per cent or better.

UK: “THE saving grace of the whisky bottle market,” said Alan Blakeman who runs bottle specialists BBR (buyer’s premium 10 per cent) , “is that as soon as the Australians, with their currency problems, started to disappear from the scene, the Americans started to show an interest.”