The Associated Press

The biggest wine bottle in the world — more than 1.8 metres tall and weighing 585 kilograms — arrived in New York City from Australia for a quick date with U.S. connoisseurs.

Its $3,500 US cork kept the equivalent of 387 regular bottles of Shiraz from thirsty mouths — indefinitely.

"I've gotten lots of offers for it and I've turned down one for $100,000," Kim Bullock, the creator, said Thursday.

The bottle was flown in at a cost of $11,000 US round trip and was scheduled to return home Friday evening.

Lunch-hour traffic stopped on Wall Street while a forklift hoisted the bottle's mammoth box. A dozen muscular men used a dolly and an iron pry bar to ease the prized package through the brass doors of the Cipriani Wall Street ballroom.

Opening the box involved a quick run to the local hardware store; Australian bolts apparently did not fit U.S. wrenches.

The bottle was the centrepiece of a show featuring all things Australian, culinary and cultural — part of a national marketing effort dubbed G'day USA: Australian Week.

The bottle's saga reaches across three continents. As owner of a liquor store in Australia, Bullock had commissioned the glass bottle to be crafted in Germany. The cork was hand-carved from a tree in Portugal.

Then five fine-wine makers in Australia's Great Southern region mixed their best types of Shiraz grapes into a single 2005 vintage, calling their collective vineyard Five Virtues.

The bottle beats out what was previously the world's largest wine bottle, the Maximus, which holds 175 regular bottles of wine.

Bullock and his buddies also produced 12,000 normal-size bottles of their blend, which they are marketing.