Email offers from Antique Wine Company

Yup, I started getting their emails a few years ago without ever having heard of them, let alone expressed an interest in them. I suppose that they, or someone they hired, harvested email addresses from this group. Yet another reason to take your business eleswhere, I guess.

Mark Lipton

There apparently is quite a market for spirits in fancy bottles. Several of the best known Cognac houses offer some of their oldest Cognac blends ( or sometimes stated single vintages, now again legal to sell in France it the maker can prove the age). Before that, some Cognac was imported into the UK in barrels and bottled as single vintage after long age. The ban on vintage dates in France was because in the past more Cognac likely was sold as, perhaps 1811, for example, than was made in that year, and such fraud was giving Cognac a bad name. Cognacs in crystal decanters from the top French crystal makers, such as Baccarat, are fairly common, They can run up to several thousands of $US in price. I would guess many such bottles are sold in the far east. Before wine became so popular there, very expensive Cognac was long bought by the very rich. If you were a top banker, factory owner, etc., it might be considered a slight or loss of face to serve your guests anything but "the best". Also many bottles have been gifts in Europe, the US, and elsewhere.

For one who is interested in the empty decanter, you often can get one on eBay for a fairly reasonable price - many often are available. The top Cognac of a company in a plain bottle, although it may have another name, is often as good as that put in an expensive crystal decanter. I would guess that you could fill up an empty decanter with such a top Cognac from a plain bottle, and very few would notice the difference. A very few high end restaurants will sell a small glass of top Cognac from a decanter. I have often wondered if some are not tempted to refresh the Cognac in the decanter with that from a plain bottle from time to time. Of course this would be considered fraud in most countries. In the US, I doubt if any possible legal actions would amount to much. However the resulting publicity might damage the reputation of the restaurant greatly. In some parts of Europe, the restaurant might have more serious problems with the law.

This says little about the concern of the high end decanters being of lead crystal and the problem of lead leaching into the cognac itself, particularly in the older decanters. Any comments?

pavane

I don't know if enough research has been done on the amount of lead leached into brandy as a function of time to give a certain answer. It would greatly depend on who is drinking the cognac. Of course most people do not give young children Cognac, but lead intake is of the most concern for them. Also pregnant women or those nursing babies should be more concerned by lead intake than others. Older adults likely are at much less risk. The most serious known chronic effects of intake of small amounts of lead are for the young before their brains and bodies are fully developed. But you can say the same for many other elements. Traces of mercury in some fish are of much more concern for the young. It amazes me that many older adults become very concerned about minute amounts of lead, mercery, arsenic, etc in food or drink while they at the same time do not control factors such as weight, lack of exercise, fat content in the diet, etc that have a very strong correlation with known very serious health risks. We can now detect traces of dozens of elements, and many more compounds, in food and drink using the most modern analytical techniques. Even detection of parts per trillion and lower sometimes is possible. Thus, taken to the limit, minute traces of many elements and compounds are present in foods and drinks. One is just making guesses unless elaborate quality studies are made to see what concentration of a substance can cause problems, what is the age response, if the problem is only acute with high enough intake, or if the problem is chronic resulting from intake of sub-acute doses over perhaps many years. Such studies are extremely expensive and often require many years. As a practical matter, the lethal dose (the dose per unit of body weight that kills perhaps 1/2 of those taking it) often is measured for lab animals. However that does not always translate well to humans. It also will miss if sub-acute intake will result in problems over an extended time. Often the limit for intake is set to be a very small percentage of the lethal dose, but this is somewhat guesswork. If penicillin had first been tested on certain South American monkeys, it likely never would have been used on humans for penicillin kills them. This is something that most vets know and keepers of South American monkeys need to know. The body does not break down the penicillin properly in the monkeys and builds up in concentration with repeated doses. A very few humans also have this serious response to penicillin. Some classic example are fat soluble vitamins such as D and A. If you have too little of these, you have serious health problems. However if you take too much you also can have other serious health problems. And it is not just taking too many vitamin pills. Some animals have livers with such high concentrations of fat soluble vitamins that one large meal of their livers can make one extremely ill and put one in the hospital.

Salut/Hi Dick R.,

le/on Fri, 18 Jan 2008 18:43:47 -0600, tu disais/you said:-

Yup. Though I think that after a couple of requests to do so, they've taken me off.

All the Best Ian I prefer to call my prejudices "working hythoseses".