For friends, lovers and close allies
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. Mmmm. Chop Suey and Burgundy. Yum.
In fact, the collection would have probably doubled in value every few years essentially paying for itself.
To what end?
A future Mayor’s entertaining? Someone who routinely depletes the stocks by 1000 bottles a year, maybe more?
How many years – at Chirac’s level of consumption – before it would stop “paying for itself”?
Few Americans understand the French and the passion for their wine.
#2, correction,
for GREAT wine. They ship the mediocre crap to the Americas.
33…Mr. Fusion….which is the truth. There is a major scandal and brew haha going on in France right now about the lowering of French standards and cheating by some of the biggest wine producers. It seems that , except for a very few of the most elite vineyards, they have been mixing their grapes and wines and selling the stuff to the French domestic market….horrors!!!!!
There are so many really fine wines being produced by Australia, Slovenia, the U.S., and South Africa, that French dosen’t mean as much as it used to.
Besides, if you really want to get a Frenchman spitting all over himself, just mention that French wine comes from American cuttings. 🙂
If the buyers are from “Red China” then, it seems rather amusing that they , likely, bought the wines with intetrest payments WE pay them for the debts they own.
#2: “Few Americans understand the French and the passion for their wine.”
This is why God has sent “terrorists” to correct the ill-state of the world today as spread by the pernicious American idea of Corporate Rule, which is basically the belief that only the accumulation of money and profits is the greatest good. The French USED TO have a passion for wine. That passion has been surpassed by the Corporate American passion for profit. If they were really passionate about wine they should hold a city celebration where they GIVE AWAY the whole wine collection to the populous.The French leaders are as corrupt as America has become. We need the terrorists to succeed so that THEY can LIBERATE US from the stranglehold of corporate greed.
Drinking even 1,000 bottles a year is not enormous,” Bled said…
damn thats a lot of booze – I’m hard pressed to drink 365 bottles a yr
#7, it is much easier if you drink the smaller bottles, like the 1 liter or 750 ml size. If you insist on those big bottles, get more friends.