The AIR MAIL Diary

International excitement over Melania shows no signs of subsiding (“Gilded trash” —The Guardian, “Stupefying” —The Irish Times, “A creeping tedium that closes off mental passages” —AIR MAIL columnist James Wolcott), but we really can’t delay any longer: reluctantly, we must turn our attention from obsessively reading and re-reading the film’s reviews to other stories from around the globe.

Three minuscule bottles of G.H. Mumm Cordon Rouge—they’re smaller than a normal-size champagne cork—were auctioned off in a single lot for $2,500 at a Berry Bros. & Rudd “historic collection” sale this week. “These grapes were picked three years before the First World War began, while the bottles reached their destination six years after it ended,” said The Times of London. “They were made for Queen Mary’s Dolls’ House, an enchanting structure dreamed up by the King’s cousin Princess Marie Louise and built by the great architect Sir Edwin Lutyens…. The champagne bottles contain genuine Mumm champagne, but not even enough to inebriate a mouse.” Even so: “There will still be champagne in them, and it may even still have bubbles in it.”