Coutts—bankers to the royals—recently released an alarming report on how the super-rich are feeling the effects of hyperinflation. According to Stephen Blackman, senior economic adviser at the bank, in the past year a case of Chateau Pétrus 1990 has zoomed up from £3,250 to £5,250. Before anyone voices outrage at this, I should add that no sensible person should entrust their funds to Blackman: Pétrus '90 has been selling for over £20,000 a case for some time and may pass the £30,000 mark before the year's end. In fact, the soon-to-be-released Pétrus '05 is now around £26,000 a case and it hasn't even been bottled.
What has happened to the world of fine wine, which puts a handful of top Bordeaux outside the range of all but the truly loaded? And does anyone actually drink them? Well, I am afraid to say quite a few of them are consumed regularly, either by those who purchased them at less than a tenth of their current prices or by several hundred collectors in Europe, North America and, increasingly, east of Suez. I was invited to dine at London's exclusive restaurant The Square last year by an Indonesian banker who gleefully ordered Domaine Leflaive's Chevalier Montrachet '96 and then La Tâche '93. He then asked me to choose something amusing. I was buoyed by the fairly strong conviction that he would be picking up the tab, but it was still an anxious moment—do you insult him by selecting something not as grand as the previous wines or by greedily saying "I hear Latour '61 is showing brilliantly right now"? Fortunately they had Montrose '90 on the list—a St Estèphe that wine guru Robert Parker awards 100 points—and it was less than half the price of the others. Reader, he liked it so much he ordered a second bottle.
There were fears that the wine bubble would burst last summer when the stock market wobbled, but since then fine wines have actually risen in price. My take is that they are no longer seen as luxury items, but as an alternative currency. Who in their right minds would flog off their cellars and put the money in the bank, or into shares or property?
The 2005 vintage for Bordeaux, Burgundy (white and red) and even Rhône and Alsatian wines is so glorious that relatively cheap wines, around £10 a bottle, are worth searching for and laying down for a couple more years. My advice is to look around for what are termed "second wines"—the name given to the barrels deemed not to be as outstanding as the best ones, or which come from younger vines. Some great chateaux allocate half or more of their annual crop as second wine. Bahans Haut Brion '05 goes for £395 a case, as opposed to £6,000-plus for Haut Brion itself. They also mature earlier, so can be enjoyed years before the "first wine." One caveat, though—second wines are only truly great in outstanding vintages, so stick to '90, '96, '00 and '05.
I am afraid that the top-end price frenzy is also caused by brand mania. An oligarch can show acquaintances how rich he is only by sticking to the well-known brands, such as Ausone, Lafite, Latour, Haut-Brion or Pétrus. True connoisseurs can drink wonderful wines— Angelus, Conseillante, Pontet-Canet, Trotanoy—at a fraction of these prices, but hardly anyone would know what they were. Interestingly, the label for Lafite's second wine, Carruades de Lafite, is nearly identical to the real thing. And yes, you have guessed it, prices for Carruades have more than doubled as less scrupulous Japanese and Chinese use them to impress gullible guests.
The Brideshead myth
There are not many novels that do justice to fine wines. One exception is Brideshead Revisited, and its paean to the joys of overindulgence in an aristocrat's once great cellar. Having just written an article on Evelyn Waugh and wine, I was bemused to discover his actual knowledge was quite cursory. Auberon, his son, also learned this as a teenager. In an article about his father's drinking habits, Bron mentioned Evelyn's pompous pronouncements about how important it was to store wines correctly. In truth, Evelyn never removed any wine from his freezing cellar more than half an hour before consuming it. More frustrating for Bron, he found on moving into the Somerset family pile, Combe Florey, that his father had not practiced what he preached about laying down great port vintages. He had drunk the lot and not a single bottle was to be found in the cellar.
Now there is a new novel which actually centres on a supposed great wine collection—Paul Torday's The Irresistible Inheritance of Wilberforce: A Novel in Four Vintages (Weidenfeld). Wilberforce sacrifices his software fortune to purchase a cellar from a dying aristocrat in Northumberland and proceeds to chip away at its content at every opportunity. He also manages to get hog-whimperingly drunk in grand restaurants while demolishing bottles of Pétrus '82. This is the only false note in an otherwise salutary tale—in all my 30 years of indulging in fine wine, I have only ever seen one devotee slightly worse for wear. In my own case, I haven't suffered a hangover even once in my life. My suspicion is that alcoholics tend to rely on more attainable refreshments, such as spirits, beer, port—and jug wine—to attain oblivion.
