Wine lover unveils $117K record-setting vintage

Wine collector Christian Vanneque unveiled Tuesday what holds the Guinness record for the most valuable bottle of white wine ever sold, an 1811 vintage from Château d'Yquem in Bordeaux, France.

The 19th century wine -- which The Wall Street Journal's Scene Asia blog notes has been reviewed as tasting like "liquefied crème brûlée" -- won't likely make it into the 22nd century. Vanneque told Scene Asia that he plans to drink it in 2017 at Paris' La Tour d'Argent to mark 50 years of working as a sommelier. Vanneque got his start at the restaurant.

"I will never resell it, even if a wealthy Chinese gentleman or a rich man from the Middle East offers to buy it," Vanneque told Scene Asia. "I'm not a fancy collector. I'm not rich. I work very hard. This is important that it's not connected to investing. I'm a sommelier. Wine is for drinking."

Until then, Vanneque plans to display the bottle in September for the opening of his new restaurant in Bali, Indonesia, SIP Sunset Grill. Vanneque lives in Bali and runs SIP Wine Bar.

Along with the record-setting price tag, the 200-year-old wine comes with an interesting story. Wine lovers link the sighting of The Great Comet of 1811 to the extraordinary quality of vintages produced that year, tagging Vanneque's Château d'Yquem as a Comet Vintage two centuries before it sold for an astronomical price.