A bottle of champagne believed to have been taken from Hitler's wine cellar by an allied soldier is being auctioned.
The prized bottle of 1937 Moet and Chandon goes under the hammer at Charterhouse auctioneers in Sherborne, Dorset on 17 August.
But the auctioneers say champagne does not age well and the tipple is unlikely to be drinkable.
The bottle was given to solicitor Nigel Wilson by a soldier as a thank you gift for some legal work 15 years ago.
"There was a rumour that some of the bottles of champagne had been poisoned by injecting through the cork"
It is expected to fetch hundreds of pounds.
Charterhouse valuer, Chris Copson said, they believed the bottle was retrieved by a soldier it from the ruins of the Reich Chancellery in Berlin after the Nazis were defeated in May 1945.
"They made their way in to the Chancellery, the Russians had been there first, there was a lot of looting and the soldier and members of his unit took themselves a little souvenir of the event," said Mr Copson.
"There was a rumour that some of the bottles of champagne had been poisoned by injecting through the cork which might be why the soldier never actually drank it.
"Champagne doesn't particularly age well anyway, but in light of that information I would say it's extremely unlikely that anyone would want to drink it anyway."
In September 2006, 21 paintings and two pencil sketches from Hitler's collection were auctioned by an anonymous owner and fetched £118,000.
The owner was encouraged to put the works up for auction following the successful sale of a watercolour painting the previous year, in Cornwall, for £5,200.
^ Back to top | BBC Sport Home | BBC Homepage | Contact us | Help | ©
~RS~q~RS~~RS~z~RS~24~RS~)