Corking Petrus prices set to soar as experts announce it's the 'best vintage for 100 years'
Chateau Petrus: King of the clarets
It is the preferred wine of millionaires and celebrities and has even had a restaurant named after it.
Now, the latest Chateau Petrus is being hailed by experts as the best vintage for 100 years.
Their mark of approval is expected to send prices soaring as connoisseurs and investors rush to buy the 2005 Petrus, which is already fetching more than £4,000 a bottle.
But as it is still maturing and won’t be at its best for at least ten years, that figure is only a starting price.
No one knows how much the 2005 vintage will cost in 2019. But older versions of the ‘king of clarets’ at Gordon Ramsay’s London restaurant Petrus are priced at up to £12,000.
The 2005 Petrus has been available from the cask for some time and it was already known that this was a superb year, as the climatic conditions in the south-west corner of France where the grapes are grown were almost perfect.
The 2005 Petrus was helped by perfect growing conditions in Pomerol
Last week, the wine world’s most influential figures attended a £100-a-head tasting at Vintners’ Hall in the City of London, where they were given an opportunity to savour the wine from the bottle.
Renowned: The wine is so special Gordon Ramsay named one of his restaurants after it
They judged the 2005 batch to be even better than the last great vintage of 1998 and possibly the finest in more than a century.
Jonathan Stephens of Farr Vintners said: ‘It is a big wine with loads of great fruit and great subtlety. For me, this was not only a mystic experience but an intellectual one as well.’
Chateau Petrus – which the Queen drank at her wedding in 1947 – comes from a 30-acre, family-owned estate in Pomerol, near Bordeaux.
According to wine specialists Berry Bros & Rudd, the region had a ‘perfect’ summer four years ago – exceptionally dry, with temperatures often above average.
The result was smaller than usual grapes of superb maturity, yielding wines of outstanding concentration.
The 2005 Petrus will have a rarity value. Only 2,400 12-bottle cases have been produced.
Many will go straight into the cellars of the super-rich.
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