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- <text id=90TT0921>
- <title>
- Apr. 16, 1990: World Notes:Auctions
- </title>
- <history>
- TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1990
- Apr. 16, 1990 Colossal Colliders:Smash!
- </history>
- <article>
- <source>Time Magazine</source>
- <hdr>
- WORLD, Page 37
- World Notes
- AUCTIONS
- A Taste of Czardonnay
- </hdr>
- <body>
- <p> Czar Nicholas II and his family died in a Bolshevik
- fusillade in 1918, but their Crimean wine cellar and attendant
- vineyards lived on. In 1922 Stalin added to the former imperial
- wine collection by rounding up bottles from other czarist
- palaces. Last week many of those rare dessert wines finally
- fell into capitalist hands. On Sotheby's London auction floor,
- Western wine dealers ponied up $1,074,544 for 13,000 bottles
- of the Romanovs' best.
- </p>
- <p> The wines date from the 1830s to 1945, and 62 bottles still
- display a twin-headed-eagle seal. A Swiss buyer paid a record
- $12,705 for three bottles of 1891 port. Why did Moscow dispose
- of the vintage hoard? It needs the hard currency.
- </p>
-
- </body>
- </article>
- </text>
-
-