Wine Reviews

FBI, Scotland Yard, Billionaire Pore Over Suspect Wine: Review It was the most expensive bottle of wine ever sold, a 1787 Chateau Lafite supposedly owned by Thomas Jefferson. After heated bidding, the Forbes family paid $156,000 for it at a 1985 Christie's auction in London. But was the wine for real?

Petite Sirah (Not Syrah!) Gets Fan Club as Growers Get Serious You know a wine has an image problem when it needs its own advocacy group. Which is why there is the California-based PS I Love You Inc. The PS stands for petite sirah, a grape whose principal problem is that wine lovers too often confuse it with syrah, now increasingly called shiraz.

Bankers, Stars Battle Over Wines as Hong Kong Restarts Auctions Jason Boyer, managing director at Cantor Fitzgerald (Hong Kong) Capital Markets Ltd., pulled a matt- black American Express Co. card from his wallet and clinked it against a wine glass.

Chateau Petrus Stars at 1st Hong Kong Wine Auction in a Decade Hong Kong's first wine auction in a decade raised about HK$11.5 million ($1.5 million), as bidders battled in a WWII bunker for rare Burgundies and Bordeaux.

Saber-Wielding Collector Sells Rare Cristal, Krug in Hot Market Slim, curly-haired Robert A. Rosania, champagne collector extraordinaire, is sharing a bottle of rare 1979 Salon Le Mesnil with me at New York's Cru restaurant.

St. Regis's Les Saveurs Trumps Work With Wine: Singapore Dining St. Regis Singapore is the city's first new hotel from a top business chain in 11 years, yet the flagship restaurant, Les Saveurs, is much more a place to discuss wine than work.

Tribeca Bar Guide: Where to Go During De Niro's Film Festival Robert De Niro's Ago at the new Greenwich Hotel (which he also co-owns) is fully booked at peak dinner hours for the duration of the Tribeca Film Festival in lower Manhattan (through May 4).

Bonhams Holds 1st Hong Kong Wine Auction for a Decade in Bunker An underground bunker used by the British army to store explosives in Hong Kong's 1941 fight against invading Japanese troops will witness another battle tomorrow: for fine Burgundies and first-growth Bordeaux.

Texas Wineries Grow Up, Beat the Heat, Seek Their Own Styles Before you start scratching your head over the idea that Texas even makes wine, consider these stats: Texas is the fifth-largest grape- and wine-producing state in the U.S., with more than 220 family-owned vineyards in a $1 billion industry. It has eight appellations of origin, including the Hill Country Viticultural Area spread over 15,000 square miles in 22 counties -- the second-largest in the U.S. The state produces more than 2 million gallons of wine annually.

Beaune's Appeal Includes Cachottiers, Lo-Lo, Wines: Elin McCoy ``Call me Lo-Lo,'' says our white- aproned, long-haired waiter, who also happens to be the chef at Caves Madeleine, an all-in-one wine shop, wine bar and bistro in Beaune, my favorite wine town in France.