You're Drunk, Go Home: Someone Paid $558K for Bottle of Wine

It's the furthest cry possible from Three Buck Chuck: A bottle of a 1945 Romanee-Conti, one of just 600 bottles produced that year by the maker of what's considered France's best Burgundy, has sold for an eye-popping $558,000 in New York on Saturday. The wine was made just before the vineyard was uprooted for replanting, and Sotheby's called it "rare and wonderful." Sky News gives that price a little context: It's 17 times the upper limit that Sotheby's had expected to fetch, and soundly whips the previous records for a standard bottle ($233,000 for an 1869 Chateau Lafite Rothschild in 2010) or a three-liter bottle ($310,700 for a 1945 Mouton-Rothschild in 2007). It wasn't the only bottle to break a record that day: Another 1945 Romanee-Conti fetched $496,000 shortly afterward, while a Macallan 1926 whisky went for $843,200—the highest price ever for a single bottle of booze. (More wine stories.)