1740 Canary & All That

London hasn't known such excitement since 1901, when Edward VII discovered that Queen Victoria had overstocked on fine sherry (he preferred champagne) and ordered 5,000 bottles from the royal cellar put up for auction. Reviving a pleasant pre-World War II custom, London's leading auction houses have recently added vintage wine to their stock in trade. It has turned out to be a bonanza. Before the year is out, Sotheby's and Christie's expect to move more than $1,000,000 in vintage wine, and prices for rare 100-and 200-year-old wines are breaking all known records.

Take the scene at Christie's last week. Gathered in a reverent circle for a pre-auction sampling was a handful of collectors, rich young men, food snobs and knowing oenophiles. Before them was a small, gray-green, hand-blown bottle. Carefully the dust of two centuries was wiped clean, the hard wax seal was delicately chipped from the neck, and with surgical precision the ancient cork was drawn in one piece. Then a thimbleful of bright, golden liquid was poured into a small, tulip-shaped glass. A patrician sniff, a twirl of the glass, the first sip, and then the pronouncement: "Rather like a fine sherry. Medium dry. But a lot of tang to it, a lot of spirit showing through. Remarkable!"

Remarkable it was, for the bottle was filled with what 18th century wine tasters called "milk punch," because along with sugar, fruit, brandy and other spirits, some milk was added. This particular batch, which later in the day brought $28 the half-bottle, had been concocted by the ancestors of the Marquess of Linlithgow in 1750, and had been lying in the family's cellars ever since.

Even more unusual was a unique flagon of Canary wine, vintage 1740. Spared any sign of ullage (loss from leakage or evaporation) in the 227 years since the dry white wine, similar to a Madeira, was bottled on the island of Tenerife, it is almost the sole survivor of its epoch. But is it any good? Its new owner, Professional Gourmet Maurice C. Dreicer of New York, who paid $518 for his bottle of Canary--highest price ever for a single bottle of wine--is in no mood to put it to the test himself. He plans, instead, to carry it gently back to the Canary Islands, where he maintains an apartment, and there he will present it as a gift to the island's governor, "to help revive interest in the Canary Islands' wine."

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