Looks like Paris officials are not drinking enough wine, so government auditors think it's best to auction off some of their wine stash.

From Telegraph: Thousands of bottles of vintage wine amassed by Jacques Chirac during his lavish two-decade reign as mayor of Paris are to be auctioned off from the town hall's vast cellar.

The majority of the cellar's 5,000 most prestigious bottles, including several 1990 Château Pétrus, worth more than £1,000 each, are due to be sold in the autumn. [...]

Last year a team of government auditors indexed the collection and concluded that housing such expensive wine was a liability considering the "very high price of certain bottles," and the risk that bottles could be damaged if the nearby Seine burst its banks.

The auditors noted that the amount of wine drunk at Paris town hall receptions in 2004 had dropped to just over 15,000 bottles - half the level it was at the end of the Chirac era, despite an equal number of receptions.

"There is a disproportionate stock compared to consumption," they concluded.