Heard a great segment on NPR this morning about an auction that took place this week where the French Presidential Palace sold many of the most collectable and expensive wines from their wine cellar to raise money to buy more affordable and early drinking wines.  Love it!!  While the mere mention of some of the great names that went on the auction block this week will make any wine lover weak in the knees, it is great to see wine being treated (even in an old world country like France) less and less as a trophy and status symbol and more like the daily respite and pleasure it is.  I can also imagine this great news for likely hundreds of winemakers throughout the country making highly delicious, desirable, and affordable wine who did not happen to get classified 150 years ago.  God forbid we drink from cellars other than those deemed worthy in the mid 1800s……..Just another little sign of the further democratization of fermented grape juice!!