May 19, 1994: The Seiad Valley AVA is established along the Klamath River in Siskiyou County, California’s northernmost viticultural area.
May 19, 2015: Wine, Moon and Stars: A South of France Experience was published. Gérard Bertrand holds a formidable reputation in the wine industry as one of the foremost innovators in the French region Languedoc-Roussillon. This book includes Gérard’s memoirs, from when he was a child helping his father to make wine, until he became a reputable oenologist admired around the world.
May 19, 2016: The three-day Sotheby’s auction of Bill Koch’s wine collection opened in New York. Koch, who kept his wine in two vaults—one in Palm Beach and one on Cape Cod—put more than 20,000 bottles up for sale, among them remarkable lots such as six magnums of 1982 Pétrus. Running May 19–21, the sale ultimately realized about $21.9 million.
May 19, 2017: A group of robbers broke into a wine estate outside Stellenbosch. Before making their getaway, a party of armed thieves appeared to have been guests at the house for several months. A trustworthy source told Netwerk24 that the armed robbery at the Delaire Graff estate on Helshoogte road west of Stellenbosch was executed with military precision.
May 19, 2018: Hardy Rodenstock, the German wine collector and dealer at the center of the notorious ‘Jefferson bottles’ counterfeit-wine scandal, died at age 76.
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Header image: dynamosquito — via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0).
