The biggest wine bottle in the world -- 6-foot-5 and 1,300 pounds arrived Thursday from Australia for a quick date with American connoisseurs
The bottle was the centerpiece of a show featuring all things Australian, oenological, culinary and cultural -- part of a nationwide marketing effort dubbed "G'day USA: Australian Week.''
The saga of Bullock's bottle reaches across three continents.
As owner of a liquor store in Albany, Australia, he had commissioned the glass bottle itself to be crafted in Germany. The cork was cut and hand carved from a tree in Portugal.
Bullock then said to five fine winemakers in Australia's Great Southern region, ``Here it is, boys! What are we going to do?''
What they did was mix their best types of Shiraz grapes into a single 2005 vintage, calling their collective vineyard Five Virtues.
"This bottle is my baby. I've christened it Albany,'' Bullock announced on Wall Street. "They've got the magnum and the maximus -- all these Latin names for big bottles. So why not a native Australian name people can understand?''
The Albany's huge label cost $1,500 to manufacture, and the box in which the bottle was flown to New York cost $7,500.
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