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List:       isn
Subject:    [ISN] After One Bottle at $2,000, Their Taste Grew Pricier
From:       InfoSec News <isn () c4i ! org>
Date:       2002-02-27 8:24:40
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http://www.nytimes.com/2002/02/26/business/26TAST.html?pagewanted=print

[You probably have heard about the five Barclays bankers canned for
running up a $62,700 wine bill, and then tried to pass this off as
client expenses. I would like to point out to ISN subscribers Blackhat
Las Vegas is coming around the corner and have you seen the wine
collection for Aureole at the Mandalay Bay?  Nudge Nudge, :)  - WK]


February 26, 2002
By R. W. APPLE Jr.

Mink isn't good enough for some people. They have to have ermine. For
such types, BMW's are too common. They crave Lamborghinis. It's not
about beauty or excellence, it's about rarity.

And so it was with the high-rolling sextet of investment bankers who
showed up one night last year at Pétrus, a glossy restaurant up the
street from St. James's Palace in London, where the Prince of Wales
lives. For their $63,000, they drank well - spectacularly well, no
doubt about that - but they could have indulged in wretched, wonderful
excess for barely a tenth of that total if they just ignored their
egos.

They opened with a 1984 Montrachet, a not notably distinguished
vintage of the world's greatest dry white wine. But like Olympic
figure skaters, our drinkers were probably overexcited at the start,
and there are no bad Montrachets, anyway.

But then they ordered three vintages of Château Pétrus, the greatest
of all Pomerols (very nearly pure merlot) and consistently the most
expensive Bordeaux, produced in tiny quantities (5,000 12-bottle cases
a year). They settled upon the first three vintages after World War
II, which are both scarce and stupendous, although the 1946 is
markedly less magical than the other two. The 1945 ($16,500) and the
1947 ($17,500) are coveted by plutocrats and collectors everywhere.

And after all, why not drink Pétrus while dining at Pétrus? Why not
drink the legendary 1945, which fetched $33,300 at Sotheby's in New
York in 1995? By that standard, insane as it may be, $16,500 is a
bargain-basement price.

But consider: At the Bistro Champlain, north of Montreal, you can
drink Pétrus 1945 for just $10,000. At Pétrus, the restaurant, you can
drink Pétrus 1970, which is almost as rich and almost as concentrated,
if not quite as rare, for $4,100, to say nothing of Pétrus 1985, which
is at its peak these days, for a mere $1,425.

It just takes homework. Patience. A well-timed question to the
sommelier. The reward? Enough money left over to order two or even
three bottles of the magnificently honeyed Château d'Yquem 1900, one
of the greatest sweet wines ever made, and a real snip at $13,100 a
bottle.

Count the boys and girls from Barclays Capital wise all the same. They
could have bought Enron; some of their colleagues did.



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