In vino veritas

I like a glass of wine with my evening meal - plus a top-up making my daily consumption a glass and a half. With the Old Bat drinking the same, we get through a bottle in two days. Steady, but not exactly excessive and certainly not binge drinking. It is normally French wine that we drink - not because we don't like other countries' wine but because we buy most of our wine in France (where it is cheaper than in England - considerably cheaper) and the range of vins etrangers in French supermarkets is very limited. You will gather that we don't go for so-called fine wines but are happy drinking the cheaper plonk. The particular supermarket chain where we buy our wine sells a very passable merlot for 2 euros (1.99 if you want to split hairs), sundry other reds such as Cotes du Rhone and fitou for about 3 euros and a very nice muscadet for less than 4. Occasionally, very occasionally, I might splash out and spend £7 on a bottle of "decent" wine, usually a New Zealand sauvignon blanc (it's where the best comes from in my opinion) or an Australian red (cabernet sauvignon or shiraz). I suppose it might be that my palate is insufficiently refined to recognise the nuances of more expensive wines, but I really don't think it necessary to spend £20 or £30 on a bottle. Imagine, then, my astonishment to read in the paper last week that somebody (Chinese, I think) had paid £180,000 for a bottle of wine. That works out at £30,000 a glass! Surely nobody can have a palate so refined that they are able to taste the difference between such an expensive wine and the cheaper (but still extortionately priced) wines that sell at nearly £100 a bottle? The truth is probably that he bought it because (a) he could afford to and (b) he wanted to let his friends and colleagues know he could afford to. I just hope for his sake that it doesn't turn out to be undrinkable when he opens it.

In vino veritas indeed: there's one born every minute.