法国总统拍卖“国窖”酒挨批

Few peopleon the planet know how to make diplomacy as steak dinner and fine wine the waythe French do. See, you can imagine the raised eyebrows and curiosity when thepresidential palace here announced it was opening up a cellar and selling off atenth of a seldom-seen private stash.

Hundreds turned outfor the first two days' auctioning paying as much as four times the openingprice for the right to own one of the president's collections.

In a specialclimate controlled cave where the wines were kept for going on sale, theexperts for the auctioneer said the bottles on the block doing indeed includesseveral rare vintages.

-“Latour 1961 whatwill that go for?”

-“Well, for us,this is worth 2,200 Euros, barely will be more expensive than that because ofthe rarity.”

-“All right, whatwe got here?”

But the experts saymost of the wines on auction could be found on the market elsewhere. In fact,the opening price on some was as low as 15 Euros a bottle. Yet, what makesthese special, that is to say expensive, is that little sticker which verifiesthey came from the president's stock. So, will the president miss any of these?

-“Absolutely not,and also you have to say yet by the times, economic times we are living in. Idon't think the president of the Republic is wanna to be drinking veryexpensive wine.”

Indeed the winethat is sold is likely to be replaced by less prestigious wine from youngernewer producers.

After a round ofbidding on Thursday night, the auction here is more than pleased, havinglowered the hammer on nearly 300,000 Euros of sales, a tiny bit of income andhelps the government dismal financial picture.

And a fair amountof it came from a Chinese bidder, including Fang Dongxing, who wasn't reallysure how much he spent on presidential wines.

-“We don'tknow, I'm sorry, we don't know. I haven't count.”

Jim Bittermann,cnn, Paris.