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Navigation Primary Navigation Home Singapore Asia Pacific World Business Entertainment Sports Technology Top Stories Most Popular Secondary Navigation Asia Pacific World Search Search: Monaco's Ali Baba wine treasure trove AFP - Wednesday, December 3 MONTE CARLO (AFP) - - It's a wine connoisseur's paradise with what it says is the world's largest hotel cellar -- some 450,000 bottles of the globe's top vintages stored deep under Monaco's exclusive Hotel de Paris, waiting to achieve their peak. But the most precious bottle of all, an 1850 Chateau Bel Air-Marquis d'Aligre, from the Margaux district in the Haut Medoc in south-western France, is unlikely ever to be opened. "We won't ever sell this," commented Gennaro Iorio, the "chef caviste" or chief cellarman in charge of the priceless wine cellar owned by Monaco's Societe des Bains de Mer (SBM). "Besides, from a drinking point of view, it's of no interest," he added, shrugging aside a message engraved on the old bottle that says "forbidden to leave a drop". The precious Marquis d'Aligre, however, is the exception among the hundreds of thousands of valuable bottles carefully stacked in the SBM cellar. The SBM, which owns and operates most of the principality's top-end hotels, restaurants and casinos, is 70 percent controlled by Monaco's ruling Grimaldi family, today headed by Prince Albert II. Many of the wines are stored in the cellar, or "laid down" as they say in the trade, several decades before being drunk. These include bottles of the exceptional 1998 vintage of Bordeaux "Rive Droite" wines, Saint-Emilion and Pomerol. "This vintage has never been matched in the region," said Iorio, adding that these bottles need more time before reaching their peak. The talent of people such as Iorio and highly experienced wine waiters, or "sommeliers", is to judge just when the bottles are ripe to drink. Every week, the SBM's wine buyer, the chef caviste and the hotel's extremely experienced wine waiters gather in the cellar's special tasting room to sample a range of wines from one of the chateaux or domains the SBM could include in the restaurant's wine list. "We personalise the signature of our restaurants by our choice of wines," said Roger Bordes, chief wine buyer for the SBM. To achieve that, "we have to have good wines from every vintage." The weekly tasting is also an opportunity for the wine waiters to taste the wines they suggest to customers -- and to gauge the best temperature for serving them. In the meantime, the value of the bottles stored in the cellar steadily mounts. Take the 36 bottles of Chateau Le Pin 1990, another exceptional vintage, purchased by SBM as "primeur" wines immediately after the harvest at a cool 400 euros a bottle each (507 dollars). Their current market value is estimated at 4,000 euros (5,074 dollars) a bottle. "A great wine cellar is all about time, not money," commented Iorio. But guarded around the clock by hi-tech security cameras, the SBM's huge wine cellar is a veritable wine bank. While its book value is estimated at 10 million euros (12.7 million dollars), the resale value of its bottles in the SBM's 30 or so top-class restaurants, hotels and casinos in the principality, is incalculable. The vast 1,500-square-metre wine cellar (16,145 square-foot) was hewn out of the rock on which Monaco is built in 1874. It thus benefits from a constant temperature and a humidity level of between 75 percent and 80 percent. The humidity preserves the quality of the corks, which Iorio describes as the "lungs of the bottle". A dry cork lets air into the bottle and oxidizes the wine, making it undrinkable. At the entrance to the cellar under Monaco's Hotel de Paris are four huge wooden casks of cognac, the oldest of which, a "reserve premier empire", dates back to 1810. The few visitors allowed past the casks into the hallowed long corridors of the cellar are met with row after row of racked wines that stretch from the earthen floor up to the rocky roof, organised according to the region of production. Some 4,000 different wine labels -- and in fact 6,300 wine references which include labels, vintages and even bottle size -- are stocked in the SBM's cellars, 95 percent of them French, with the world's most expensive bottles and rarest wines stacked alongside more ordinary labels. But quality neither depends on price nor reputation, said Iorio. Belying that statement, precious vintages of the world's most spectacular labels, Petrus and Chateau d'Yquem, are locked behind a heavy iron grill in an area of the cellars dubbed "The Chapel". Among the vintages are a 1982 Petrus, which in Iorio's opinion was "the Bordeaux vintage of the century after that of 1961". Other "sacred" bottles which have played an important part in the history of wine are also stored close by. These include a bottle of 1811 "Roi de Rome" cognac from Sazerac-de-Forges et Fils, the last remaining bottle of a famous run of cognacs. The penultimate bottle was consumed in the Hotel de Paris by Winston Churchill, who was a frequent visitor to the hotel. Has the global economic crisis had an impact on great wines? "Quality makes all the difference. The legendary labels will always sell," emphasised Iorio. Email Story IM Story Printable View Blog This Recommend this article Average (0 votes) Sign in to recommend this article » Most Recommended Stories » Related Articles: Entertainment & Lifestyle Extra jump rope for lingerie models pre-showAP - 1 hour 25 minutes ago Kazakh film scoops prestigious Indian prizeAFP - 2 hours 14 minutes ago Classic holiday stories inspire during tough timesAP - 2 hours 19 minutes ago YouTube cracks down on 'sexually suggestive' contentAFP - 2 hours 26 minutes ago Berlin festival to spotlight prescient Cold War cinemaAFP - 2 hours 42 minutes ago Enlarge Photo Gennaro Iorio, head cellar man at the Louis XV restaurant presents a bottle of Cognac "Roi de Rome" from 1811, an obsolete series of which the last bottle was drunk by late British Prime Minister Winston Churchill. Some 450,000 bottles of the globe's top vintages are stored deep under Monaco's exclusive Hotel de Paris, waiting to achieve their peak. 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