From the weekend press

Quite extraordinary what you learn from a morning’s reading. In Beirut now, according to the FT magazine, there is now a weekly ritual of vinous extravagance. Every Friday night in a new nightclub called Crystal, someone buys a salmanazar of Moët priced at $3,000. When the purchase is made the lights are dimmed, the buyer is spotlit and the nine-litre bottle is presented to him by two waiters. His name is engraved on a special board on which names are ranked according to how many salmanazars they have forked out for. (Someone bought 15 of them one night.) The...