Pricey isn't always perfect

When you enter the gravelly driveway of Château Haut-Brion, you’d scarcely believe this is Bordeaux’s top wine house, which English diarist Samuel Pepys wrote about and whose wine American President Thomas Jefferson drank in generous quantities. It’s a wine brand with history on its side, and is mightily expensive as a result, but there’s nothing on the ground or in the antiseptic winery to reveal its antiquity.

It’s at this wine house, owned by Joan Dillon, daughter of the man who was John F. Kennedy’s Treasury Secretary, that I learned my first lesson on expensive wine. Jean-Philippe Delmas, Haut-Brion’s winemaker who’d inherited his job from his father, took me to the tasting room and invited me to sample all the wines produced at the estate between 1990 and 2000. For a wine enthusiast, there could be few greater opportunities, but I think I disappointed Delmas by indicating my preference for the estate’s second, and, therefore, sometimes less expensive, wine—La Mission. If wine aficionados followed the logic of Thorstein Veblen, who’d said that the desirability of certain commodities grew in direct proportion to their price tag, they would miss out on great joys of life.

The price of a 750 ml bottle of Haut-Brion at London merchant Berry Bros. & Rudd varies from $327 (Rs 13,080) for the 1991 vintage to $525 (Rs 21,000) for 2006, which has been sold out despite being still in barrels. But a La Mission can be yours for $145 (Rs 5,800) (2004 vintage), or for $565 (Rs 22,600) (2006), or for $782 (Rs 31,280) (1990). And the 2000 is valued at $1,270 (Rs 50,800); a 1989 has breached the $2,000 (Rs 80,000) mark. Not surprisingly, people are slowly moving towards La Chapelle de La Mission, the second wine of La Mission, whose younger vintages are retailing in the US for less than $40 (Rs 1,600).

My problem with expensive wines is threefold. They invariably fail the price-satisfaction test —the more expensive the wine, the less you get to drink of it, which leaves you with very little on your palate to let you appreciate its beauty.

I got my first taste of this ironical situation when I sat through a magnificent dinner in the cave that used to be the hermitage of the eighth-century monk after whom the French wine-producing district of Saint-Emilion is named. It was a charity dinner and the organisers were being very charitable till they had to serve the iconic Cheval Blanc 1982 (owned by LVMH supremo Bernard Arnault).

The wine was not only obscenely expensive, but also in short supply. We got literally four teaspoons of it and before we could say cheese, the wine had disappeared from the glasses. My other big issue with Bordeaux’s most expensive wines is that they are ready to be drunk only many years after they have been bought. You must wait till 2015 before you can dream of drinking the Haut-Brion 2005 because its tannins would be very rough. The good news is that the wine will be fit for drinking till 2050. But I belong to the school that believes any pleasure must not be postponed.

And yes, you have to be careful about fakes. Counterfeit labels—one of China’s sunrise industries— have made fine wine collecting a hazardous proposition. The French have seen Louis Vuitton knock-offs appearing everywhere. The last thing they would want is bad wine being sold under counterfeit French labels. Before you fork out a hefty sum, make sure you’re buying it from a retailer who can guarantee autheticity.

— Sourish Bhattacharya is Executive Editor, Mail Today