$40,000 Bottle of Champagne is Oldest in the World

The Singapore restaurant industry must be booming, at least for Julia Sherstyuk - who spent $42,758 on a storied bottle of Veuve Cliquot for her Russian haute-cuisine restaurant. For the moment, she has no intention of opening or selling it.

The bottle is believed to have been salvaged from a 19th-century shipwreck in the Baltic Sea - the auction house that sold the wine to Sherstyuk believes the 1841 vintage Veuve Cliquot and 144 more bottles were on their way to the court of the Russian czar in St. Petersburg at the time.

Sherstyuk bought the champagne at a June 3 online auction offered by Acker Merrall & Condit . It was [purchased] due to [its] historical significance, Sherstyuk told the Wall Street Journal, noting that the wine helps Buyan, her restaurant, convey a sense of Russian history and culture.

The bottle will be joining a $5 million collection already at Buyan - which includes 1854 bottle of Lafite Rotschild and an 1859 bottle of Mouton Rothschild, along with a €24,000 bottle of Jugler [$38,000 USD] also purchased at an online auction. Although Sherstyuk regularly resells wine from her private collection, the historical champagne will remain on display for an indefinite period of time.

[Source: WSJ]