I’m so glad I didn’t pay $54,480 for a six-litre bottle (Imperial size) of 1998 Penfolds Grange. Another $650 and I could be driving away in a brand-new Subaru WRX STi. The news that an anonymous Victoria-based wine enthusiast has paid this money for this wine has sent Southcorp and Langton’s Fine Wine Auctions into paroxysms of pleasure, but simply reminds me that too many people buy too much wine for all the wrong reasons. For at just over $9,000 per litre, nobody will ever convince me there’s value in that wine. The only source of value would be at some latter date if the new owner decided to sell the bottle, provided for some other reason somebody else was prepared to pay even more to rehabilitate it. Even then, wine is ultimately made to be drunk, and it’s extremely unlikely that anybody is going to drink this bottle. For all the good it is going to do anybody – other than Penfolds or Langton’s from a once-off financial perspective – I think it mightn’t as well have been bottled at all. Wine doesn’t need the sort of publicity in the media that puts it out of reach of normal people who might be interested in adopting it as a day-to-day beverage. This sale sends out all the wrong messages to potential wine consumers, since it focuses entirely on the exclusive nature, intellectual puffery and fiscal snobbery and greed so often associated with wine. In short, it’s an enormous put-off. It doesn’t alter anything about the way that genuine wine enthusiasts and drinkers view Grange as a wine, but simply repeats the same old pointless message that icon wines are rarely enjoyed for the drinks they were supposed to be. Hope it’s got a decent cork!
