PETRUS
It says something when you open a bottle of wine that everybody around the table has already declared is almost certainly a fake, and yet it still creates a ripple of excitement. But that’s what the sight of Petrus 1945 on a label does to people – me included; this was at a supper with friends in Bordeaux about 10 years ago, the bottle provided by a US merchant who said, with admirable honesty: ‘I know this isn’t real, or I wouldn’t be opening it.’
It further says something when, of the various people I asked for comments about this estate, a full half of them asked if they could remain anonymous. But that’s what the thought of losing an allocation of Petrus does to people. The rest of us – who don’t get to trade in it, or to put bottles away for our children’s university fund – can start to understand why, when
