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It's for drinking - not storing

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Vintage bottles of wine are selling at Sotheby's for outlandish prices.

Banking on wine may be as old as the hills, but nowadays excited bidders seldom get to raise a goblet with the same enthusiasm.

These wines are deemed 'too good to drink' and often spend the rest of their lives languishing in a dark, climate-controlled cellar.

It is ironic that magnificent vintages end up as unreal and remote a commodity as pork bellies or tin futures.

This may be because many of these high-rollers came late to wine. Perhaps initially intimidated by phrases like 'surprisingly coy . . . faint notes of rhubarb . . . bombastic on the tongue', they now retaliate by making rare and sought-after bottles inaccessible to ordinary wine-lovers.

Luckily, I was weaned on wine.

As a toddler, I licked fermented elderberry juice from my grandfather's finger. Rose was poured as casually as Coca-Cola at our dinner table.

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