Most expensive wines

There's more to wine  than two-dollar Night Train. In the mid-'80s, billionaire Malcolm Forbes paid approximately $155,000 at auction for a bottle of wine. The bottle, which was believed to have come from Thomas Jefferson's own collection and dated back to 1787, was then put on display under strong lights and at the wrong angle. These conditions eventually made the cork fall into the bottle, and the wine lost its value and was thrown away.

Yes, it's true that you don't have to pay a fortune for a bottle of wine, but keep in mind that you usually get what you pay for. If you really want to impress that special lady, show her your cellar of fine wines -- or at least display your knowledge of them. Read on to discover the ten most expensive wines available on the market. Note that all prices are in US dollars and were evaluated on the basis of a 750 ml bottle from a retailer.

Number 10

Chteau Lafite Rothschild Pauillac 1996 - app. $287

Talk about being at the right place at the right time. In the mid-18th century, a French politician was about to be shipped off overseas, but not before visiting a physician. The doctor prescribed him some Lafite wine as a tonic. This politician enjoyed it so much that he offered some bottles to King Louis XV, and before long this wine became the star of Versailles and was dubbed "the King's wine." Remarkably dark, it sports mineral aromas of mint and black currant. Flavorful, its texture is silky and lingers in the mouth.

Number 9

Chteau Margaux 1995 - app. $402

Its color is almost black, yet it couldn't taste farther from ink. Containing passionate fragrances of blackberry and cassis, this smooth and racy vintage is powerful but still manages to be compact in its fruit structure. This vineyard goes back a thousand years and it has definitely mastered the art. The 1995 vintage recalls the 1986 for its complexity but it's also a good reminder of the 1990 for its elegance. The 1994 version is also quite expensive.

Portuguese wine classification

Quality Categories:

Denominação de Origem Controlada (DOC) This is the top tier. Equivalent French AOC, Italian DOC and Spanish DO. It has expanded considerably in recent years as newer regions make the grade up from IPR, with defined geographical limits, maximum yields, recommended and permitted grape varieties and minimum alcohol levels. Sometimes there are minimum ageing requirements as well.

Indicação de Província Regulamentada (IPR) Intermediate category of regions. Serving its five – year probationary period before it is acceptance (or rejection) by the authorities. Most have now been promoted DOC. Only 4 of them remain: Lafões, and the Azores IPRs of Biscoitos, Pico and Graciosa.

Vinho de Qualidade Produzido em Região Determinada (VQPRD); Labels very occasionally still use this group term for DOCs and IPRs. You are more likely to meet the sweet and sparkling version: Vinho Licoroso de Qualidade Produzido em Região Determinada (VLQPRD); Quality sweet fortified wines. Vinho Espumante de Qualidade Produzido em Região Determinada (VEQPRD); Quality sparkling wines. Vinho Frisante de Qualidade Produzido em Região Determinada (VFQPRD); Quality semi-sparkling wines.

Vinho Regional (VR); Middle tier of the wine hierarchy, roughly equivalent to French vin de pays. This is an increasingly important category, particularly in the south where wines are often made from grapes grown over a wide area. The regulations are less stringent than for DOCs, allowing greater flexibility in choice of grape variety, vinification and ageing. Many producers choose to make VR rather than DOC because of this flexibility, using grapes or methods not traditional in their area, and sometimes, they feel, thereby maximising their area’s potential. Some label their wines as VR even though they obey the local rules.

Vinho de Mesa; the most basic and undistinguished category, table wine, is commercially important as so much off-dry to medium-dry rosé is exported under this label. One of Portugal’s best red wines, Dado, is a Vinho de Mesa, unclassified because it’s a cross-dresser, a blend of Dão and Douro.

How to drink wine?

Prepare your wine so that it is at the proper temperature for drinking. There are varying opinions as to what that temperature is for drinking wine, but here's a good rule of thumb: If it's white, chill it in the fridge for at least an hour before serving, but if it's red, serve it at room temperature (unless the temperature of the room is above 21 degrees - in that case, chill it slightly, and invest in an air conditioner).

Make sure that, along with your bottle of choice, you also have a decent corkscrew-corks can be stubborn. And remember, if you're removing the foil seal from a particularly old bottle of wine, it's a good idea to wipe off the top of the bottle to remove any lead residue.

Inspect the cork for any mold or discoloration. If you find any, just make sure it doesn't continue down into the bottle - if it appears to stop at the top, simply wipe it off and proceed.

Once you have removed the cork from the bottle, sniff it. Yes, I'm serious, and no, this step won't invoke that fuzzy, lightheaded feeling - you're smelling the cork to detect any unpleasant aromas that may indicate spoilage.

If your drink of choice contains any sediment, you'll need to decant it. In English, this simply means to pour it into another container through cheesecloth, wire mesh, or coffee filters to remove the offending grit.

Pour yourself a healthy glass and let it stand or "breathe" for a moment, to allow the complexity of the flavors to come through. Depending on what you're drinking, you may want to let it breathe for a bit longer--try an hour for young reds, and 2-3 hours for old, fine reds.

Deeply inhale the scent of your wine, as a good portion of what we perceive as "taste" for drinking wine is really determined by smell.

Take a sip and hold it in your mouth for a moment, noticing the different flavors you detect.

This is the best of the wine tasting tips... Drink up!

Is old wine safe to drink?

The simple answer is drink it. People have bottles of wine that have been saved since the 1920s or even before that, that they treasure and drink on special occasions. Wine is an alcohol. The alcohol keeps bacteria and other nasty things from growing in it. You are generally safe in drinking it.

A separate question is will you enjoy drinking the wine. Only certain wines were meant to age. Most wines are not meant to age. If you have a "touristy bottle" like a Chianti-in-a-basket or a Portuguese-wine-in-a-basket, those were never sold because they were tasty in the first place. They were sold as decorations, really. White Zinfandels were meant to be drunk immediately, not even aged for more than a year. There is a gigantic percentage of wine bottles that go old in a year or two, never mind decades.

Even for wines that were meant to age - say fine Burgundies or Bordeaux wine - they only age well when stored properly. They need to be at an even, cool temperature. They need to be on their side, so the cork doesn't dry out and let in air. They need to be kept away from sunlight. You could have the most perfect bottle of wine for aging and still have it taste awful because of bad storage conditions.

Still, even if the wine was ruined, it won't kill you. It'll just taste like vinegar.

Open the bottle. Even if it's not tasty, it's still an adventure to taste a wine from that era.

Aromas and flavors of wine

When a wine drinker raises a glass of wine, he or she often stops to swirl the wine, and then breathe in deeply of its aroma. Often this tells far more about a wine than an actual taste of it. Why is that?

The tongue can only really taste four flavors - salty, sour, sweet, and bitter. There is also a fifth flavor that some can taste, "umami", which is related to MSG. However, all of the delicate shades of a wine - pepper, violet, mint, cantelope - can't be deduced with a tongue. Those all come from your nose, which is why wines don't taste as good when you have a cold or allergy. Your nose is the key to truly tasting a wine well.

When you swirl wine in a glass, you are stirring the wine molecules up in the air, so when you then inhale, you inhale as many as possible into your nose. Those wine molecules go streaming past the cilia that exist to block dirt and dust, and settle into matching molecules in the olfactory bulb, based on each particular smell. The two olfactory membranes, about stamp-sized, are just under the bridge of the nose.

This is how you smell cinnamon and licorice, chocolate and vanilla. It's not that someone dropped a chocolate chip into your wine - it's that a certain group of chemicals in the wine is identical to that in a chocolate chip.

Most humans can smell up to 10 000 smells, but as we age, our sense of smell deteriorates. Other things, such as smoking, can also harm the olfactory bulb sensors.

The seven main types of smells a nose keys on are:

• Camphor
• Musk
• Floral
• Peppermint
• Etheral
• Pungent
• Putrid
  
  So grab a glass of wine, give it a swirl, and give the old nose a workout. You might be surprised to see what it can detect in that regular glass of red wine.

Wine openers

It is important that one should know that how to open a bottle of wine without hurting your hand with the corkscrew or drowning anyone in the fluid.

The first step in opening the wine bottle is to screw off the cap with the help of the corkscrew then lobbing it to the trash. . In ancient times the metal wrapping was made with the lead. Once when they found that lead kill man it has been switched to other alloys and later to aluminum or plastic.

Whatever it may be you have to decapitate it. To decapitate it one can use a sharp knife, bottle openers or special bottle foil cutter. With the help of knife the metal can be sliced below the protrusion which is at the top of the bottle neck. After removing the metal make sure that there is no metal left at the lip of the bottle. This is very important since when the metal touches the metal when you are pouring the wine in a glass the combination of wine and metal will oxidize the fluid.

To remove the cork there are currently many different models to be purchased. The three major devices since long time are the wing lever, the waiters pull and the dishonest butler. The bottle openers used mainly to open a wine bottle is still the waiters pull.

Next to these models, there are nowadays many more comfortable and luxurious models, which can remove the cork in no time.

Wine labels

Wine labels are the important source to know more about the wine. The wine labels tell the consumers the wine type and its origin. Wine label is the only resource with which the consumer can evaluate the wine before purchasing them. Information like type of wine, country of origin, quality, alcoholic content, producer, bottler, and importer are the main things that have to be included in the wine labels.

Judging a wine by its label

Most of the wine lovers choose their wine by seeing the labels. The way of looking at the label may vary from one person to another for example the novices are attracted by the artistic labels and the snobs are insisted by the famous names in the label. Whatever it may be the wine label reveals the most important thing about the wine - The Flavor.

Required information

The European Union's wine authorities want more information that specifies the quality of wine should be printed on the label.

US law requirements on the wine labels are:

• Brand name
• Type of wine
• Bottled information
• Alcohol by volume 
• Net contents