How much is top wine really worth?
Images of Côte d'Azur drinkers tipping high-end Bordeaux into sangría have sparked outrage. What does it say about our perceptions of wine's value? Plus: what I've been drinking this week
It was the most arresting wine image of the summer: revellers on the Isle de Sainte-Marguerite, off Cannes, tipping bottles of Pétrus into a bucket of sangría. The TikTok video, taken in August but picked up by media only last week, has now had 1.6 million views. It has sparked outrage in France and beyond. Leading French sommelier Philippe Faure-Brac told The Times that it was “like using a Picasso or a Van Gogh to make a fire”.
Because Pétrus is one of Bordeaux’s most hallowed names, the greatest estate of Pomerol. The vintages identifiable among the ten bottles being gaily added to orange juice and ice, 2006 and 2011, currently retail for around £3,200 and £2,700 respectively. The total bill was €113,682: the entertainment executive who paid it told media that he did it to reach the £100,000 minimum spend on a premium table at La Guérite restaurant.
Silly behaviour on the Côte d’Azur from people with more money than sense is par for the course. This is the place where the posturing rich can shell out €35 for spaghetti at a beach-side café (for that is indeed the price of a plate of pasta at La Guérite.) But the Pétrus stunt touched a nerve with the wine world because it was so sacrilegious. It’s not just the squandered liquid or wasted money – it’s a question of a revered wine being made to look ridiculous.
The images set me thinking about the relationship of wine – especially fine wine – to money and the display of wealth. The video’s message is not simply, “I’m rich” – after all, much of the ordinary behaviour of wealthy people says that, from displaying stupidly expensive watches to jeans to cars. No, this video tell us: “I’m so rich that I can scorn your holiest symbols of taste and refinement.”
I think that is discomfiting for wine people not just because of the waste of lovely Pétrus (I’m assuming it’s lovely. I am not, alas, a member of the wine-writing elite who get invited to taste such liquid gold, and like them I certainly can’t afford the stuff myself.) Wasting Pétrus also upends the agreed social norms for consuming and assessing superstar wines.
The norms for consuming any wine can be restrictive: witness the periodic angst over whether it’s ok to put ice in a glass of white. But when it comes to the most illustrious names of Bordeaux and Burgundy, the sheer amount of money involved means the code of behaviour is much stricter.
Indeed earlier this year, prominent wine writer Jamie Goode caused a stir when he wrote a piece suggesting that “some wines are beyond criticism.”
“If you taste them and don’t like them very much, it’s probably best to stay quiet,” Goode advises. He thus effectively pronounced dead any criticism of such hallowed names as, for instance, Pétrus.
That’s certainly not my journalistic ethos. You’re not going to find me saying nice things about wines I consider grotesquely overpriced; indeed it may be fair to say that have a minor reputation for being brutally honest about bottles that leave me unimpressed. But within the charmed circle of critics he’s talking about, Goode is right. “Only you can lose if you publish a negative note,” he says – by being blacklisted by the producer concerned and thus denied access to the wines.
That’s the high-end writers’ and critics’ side of the bargain: endlessly positive coverage in exchange for access to superstar wines. But consumers are expected to honour their side of the deal too.
That means regarding these bottles not simply as stupidly expensive luxury products – like a £40,000 Patek Philippe watch or £25,000 Hermès handbag – but treating them with the different kind of reverence accorded cultural treasures. Even if rich drinkers don’t actually know enough, say, to appreciate the nuances of one Pétrus vintage compared to another, they’re supposed to act like they do. Not tip the stuff into sangría – never mind that if they’ve paid for it, the financial impact for the château cocerned is exactly the same as if they were oohing and aaaing over it in a three-Michelin-star restaurant.
Putting Pétrus in sangría, in other words, represents a point of rupture that threatens to expose the naked economics behind this luxury product.
I realise, of course, that any such bottles will be far beyond the means of most readers. Well – I assume so, or perhaps you’re actually a super-wealthy subscriber, getting your butler to summarise these words for you now. Yet there’s an uncomfortable relationship more generally between wine appreciation and money.
One of the most common questions I and other wine professionals get asked by ordinary drinkers – other than “what’s your favourite wine?” – is whether x pricey bottle is “worth it”. But while the question of whether a bottle costing, say, £15 is twice as good as one costing £7.50 is fairly simple – almost certainly – it gets more complicated the higher the price.
Is a £30 bottle twice as good as a £15 one? It’s most likely better, but really twice as nice? It’s impossible to make such a generalisation. And is a bottle costing £60 four times as good as its £15 shelf-mate? We’re into the realms of personal taste: it’s subjective. How can anyone measure flavour and enjoyment so precisely?
Some readers of this blog - my Dad, for instance – do occasionally grumble that they can’t afford the wines I write about. But luxury wines like Pétrus are far, far beyond my league. Never mind a thought experiment about whether a £50 or £100 bottle is x times tastier than a cheaper bottle. When drinking Pétrus 2006 – rather than merely investing in it – if you need to ask the price, you can’t afford it. You just need to show appropriate respect, as if it really is 64 times better than that £50 plonk.
The sangría-swilling Côte d’Azur boys broke that bargain. And that is what is unsettling to the world of fine wine about their antics.
What I’ve been drinking this week
Tenuta Stella Ribolla Gialla 2021, Collio - this is a gorgeous example of this Italian white from up on the north-east border with Slovenia. Citrus and ripe fruit, lovely complexity and depth, just a touch of vanilla from judicious use of oak barriques (Passione Vino, £28.)
Celler Comunica “Suc de Sauló” 2019, Montsant - this Catalan red is a blend of Garnacha and Samsó (ie Carignan)- common enough for the region, but the three former wine consultants behind this property have coaxed something quite special from the vines here. Brimming with fruit but elegant too, with a touch of minerality - wonderfully harmonious (Les Caves de Pyrenees has the 2021, £21; also in eg Salt Yard restaurants, London.)
Eraldo Viberti Nebbiolo Langhe 2019 - only around 3,000 of these bottles are produced each year by this small Piemonte grower. Made from younger vines than Barbaresco or Barolo, on paper a straight Langhe red like this is a humbler designation - but Nebbiolo of this quality is as brilliant as many a Barbaresco. Fragrant cherry fruit, supremely elegant - serious stuff (Passione Vino, £35.)
The unwritten social contract that things of exceedingly high quality, be it music, visual art or a well crafted wine should be appreciated with a certain reverence, is only something those who are, or want to be, in the know care about. In some ways I think this wine does its job. Its maker is compensated fairly, as is the retailer, the revellers get drunk and have a good time while garnering the attention and outrage they seek, and the world will rotate to make another excellent vintage of Petrus. Wine is about pleasure after all. Would I do the same with a bottle of that caliber? Of course not, but in the same way I can’t dictate how someone enjoys a painting or a song, I have no say in this.
If you can find the Granit from Comunica up your way, that's a fine rosé as well. They played with Trash Natural for a bit and have thankfully come to their senses and are making a lot of good wines these days.