Adventures in Alcohol | HK$14,000-a-glass wine: what is it good for?

If, like me, you are no economist then perhaps only a few phrases from the dismal science will have stuck in your head – ‘the invisible hand of the market’; ‘the tendency of the rate of profit to fall’ or ‘irrational exuberance’.

The last phrase was used by former Fed chairman Alan Greenspan in 1996 to describe “unduly escalated asset values” or financial bubbles (Isn't Google wonderful?).

The phrase comes to mind when seeing that someone has just paid HK$12,556,250 for 114 bottles of wine from Domaine de la Romanée-Conti. That’s the hammer price and buyer’s premium.

Of course DRC is a wonderful wine, very collectable and potentially a fantastic investment, if wine market sentiment doesn’t swivel in some other direction.

But perhaps this wine was bought to be drunk. It happens. Corkscrews were invented for a reason.