Britain’s government is selling vintage French wine at around £5,000 a bottle in a bid to make its wine cellar self-funding as part of a national austerity drive and clamp-down on extravagant expenditure.
The government wine cellar, located in the basement of Lancaster House, near Buckingham Palace, is used to provide wine for foreign VIP guests ranging from royalty to heads of state and Prime Ministers at 200 or more events a year.
The cellar contains 38,090 bottles of wine and spirits with an estimated market value of £2.95 million, according to an annual report on the cellar released in February.
But figures show that a government review from 2010 recommending the cellar become self-funding rather than a drain on taxpayers had not worked out with sales of £44,000 in 2012 but purchases of about £49,000.
Auction house Christie’s said the government was selling six lots of wine, a total of 54 bottles, on March 21 with the sale expected to raise up to £65,000.
A spokeswoman said this was “the first time that wine from the Government Hospitality Cellar has gone to auction” with previous sales conducted privately.
“This is part of the process for making the cellar self-funding for the lifetime of the current Parliament,” said a statement from Mark Simmonds, a junior minister in Britain’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office.
Austerity has been the watchword for finance minister George Osborne since his Conservative-led coalition came to power in 2010 but last week Britain suffered its first ever sovereign ratings downgrade when Moody’s cut its rating to Aa1 from Aaa, citing weak prospects for economic growth.