Michael Burry, more commonly known as "the investor Christian Bale played in The Big Short," has found a new play. "Just about every single case of fine wine sitting in a London bonded warehouse can be a short position on the US dollar," he wrote on his Substack on September 10, under the title "Shorting the Dollar by Drinking Free First Growth Bordeaux."

His case runs like this. Fine wine prices are down 25 to 30% from their peak in October 2022. Wine in London bond trades in pounds, so if the dollar falls, an American's cases are worth more dollars without anyone lifting them. Burry says he considered around 700 wines this year and bought around 40, and the names he mentions include Pétrus, Romanée-Conti, Mouton Rothschild, Margaux and Sassicaia.

The trade has heard this one before. Matthew O'Connell of the London merchant Bordeaux Index told The Drinks Business that Burry is describing "an asset the trade has understood for generations: a case of Bordeaux in bond, with no counterparty risk, no further issuance of that vintage and a supply that only ever falls because people drink it."

"Buy low, be very patient, then sell high or enjoy it," Burry advises. Sound advice, assuming your bottles and bonds are held to maturity.

Jesse Katz, who founded Aperture Cellars in Sonoma in 2009 and was Wine Enthusiast's Winemaker of the Year for 2025, boarded a United flight from New York to San Francisco with samples of all five Bordeaux red varieties from his Farrow Ranch vineyard, a beaker, a graduated cylinder and some pipettes. He settled the blend at 35,000 feet. United and Aperture call it the first wine blended in the sky.

The reason is the cabin. Its air runs at around 10 to 20% relative humidity, which, Katz says, mutes a wine's aroma. With less aroma, the fruit recedes and the acidity, tannin and texture come forward. A study Lufthansa commissioned from Germany's Fraunhofer Institute for Building Physics found that in the cabin, salt tastes 20 to 30% weaker and sugar 15 to 20% weaker. As one of its researchers put it, "In the air, food and drink tastes as it does when we have a cold." So rather than make the blend on the ground and hope it would survive the climb, Katz tasted and adjusted in the air, through about nine trials.

The result, Air and Vine 2024, is 76% Cabernet Sauvignon, 12% Malbec, 6% Merlot, 4% Petit Verdot and 2% Cabernet Franc, with 24 months in barrel. It will be poured in United Polaris business class on select international routes from 2028, which gives the rest of us two years to find the miles.

New York's first-ever Italian Wine Week runs from October 12 to 25, which makes it, in true Italian fashion, a generous sort of week. The Italian Trade Agency has lined up more than 100 wine shops across Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens and Jersey City, with Italian displays, offers of their own and, in places, tastings. A map at italianwineweeknyc.com shows which shops are in and what each is offering.

The shops are the public side of Vinitaly USA, the American edition of Verona's Vinitaly, which moves to New York after two editions in Chicago. More than 300 Italian producers will show their wines at Pier 36 in Manhattan on October 26 and 27.

At 12:01 a.m. Eastern on Tuesday, September 29, the United States banned imports of Canadian beer, wine, cider and spirits packaged for sale in bottles, cans, boxes and kegs. That encompasses Ontario's VQA ice wine and the wines of British Columbia. The White House calls the ban an answer to Canada's "discrimination" against American alcohol. Most provinces pulled American wine and spirits from their shelves in March 2025, and since then, according to the Distilled Spirits Council, American spirits exports to Canada have fallen 70% and wine exports 87%.

"The ban is especially severe," said Rob Taylor of Wine Growers Canada, "because it eliminates the US market for Canadian wine rather than simply making the product more expensive."

For fine wine, the loss is ice wine. Canadian ice wine made its name in 1991, when Inniskillin's 1989 Vidal Icewine won the Grand Prix d'Honneur at Vinexpo. Bottles already in the country can still be sold, and those in bonded warehouses can come out at a 50% duty. After that, it's last call.

One question at the foot of every issue. Answer it correctly, and early, and you climb.

When Sassicaia first went on sale, with the 1968 vintage, it was legally classed as what?

A. DOCG

B. Table wine

C. DOC

D. IGT

Until Thursday.