3 of the Most Expensive Wine Bottles in the World

What makes wine expensive is not just the taste or how much it was aged. Sometimes, it's not even the wine itself that gives it its value - it's the bottle. People have the tendency to collect old stuff and would pay a high price to have a certain item. Here are three of the most expensive bottles of wine in the world.

Chateau Lafite 1787

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• Christie's London sold a Chateau Lafite 1787 in 1985 for $160,000. The bottle bore the initials Th J - Thomas Jefferson, the third US president's initials.
• The most expensive white wine ever sold also bore Thomas Jefferson's initials. It was a bottle of 1784 Chateau d'Yquem sold at Christie's London in 1986 for $56, 588.
• A bottle of Chateau Margaux that also bore Thomas Jefferson's initials was being sold for $500,000 by William Sokolin in 1989. However, before anyone could offer to buy it, the bottle was broken by accident - a waiter bumped the bottle with a coffee tray. Fortunately for the wine merchant, the bottle was insured and he got $225,000 for it, a price he could not have received had the bottle been safe and still being sold with the hefty price tag.

The wine in the bottles are no longer drinkable at this point in time (even if the Margaux managed to survive today). Like any item for collection, the rarity affects its value. And as time passes, the number of such items dwindle. Imagine how much those things would cost in the next century?

Source: http://www.forbes.com/2003/11/19/cx_np_1119feat.html