Experts to Re-Cork Older Vintages : Costly Wine to Get New Lease on Life

In the wine world’s most extraordinary after-sale service, the legendary French wine house, Chateau Lafite-Rothschild, is sending a task force to the United States to re-cork--at no charge--older bottles of the fabulously expensive Bordeaux.

Starting Tuesday in New York, the team of experts from the domain of the Barons de Rothschild will re-cork about 2,000 bottles of 1962-or-earlier vintages in New York, Boston, Atlanta, Miami and Dallas. The Lafite team, which was in San Francisco last year, took reservations for re-corking service through January, then closed the appointments down. The demand, said the company, was “tremendous.”

An 1806 vintage--the same year Napoleon ordered the blockade of Britain and construction of the Arc de Triomphe in Paris--will be among the wines to be re-corked. It is in Boston. A bottle from that year once sold for $31,000.

It was also the year that wine-lover Thomas Jefferson was in the White House, and, it is said, enjoyed that same noble vintage, which also gained the favor of Madame Pompadour.

The re-corking is carried out by Lafite because, as the wine experts say, “wine is only as good as its cork.” Failure to attend to old corks leads to oxidized, undrinkable wine.