PETRUS

Icon: it’s a word that is much overused, in wine as elsewhere. But in the context of the world’s greatest wines, none could be more deserving of the descriptor than this sought-after and convention-defying estate on Bordeaux’s Right Bank. Jane Anson gets to the heart of the enigma that is Petrus

- Jane Anson

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 – I 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 we see headlines about auction prices, such as one in the US in 2018, where the 1998 Petrus reached US$38,000 for a single case – and even the least expensive year is unlikely to go for less than £20,000 in the UK market. Not to mention the cool valuation of $1 billion for the 11.5ha estate when owner Moueix sold 20% of its capital to a Colombian-American investor in 2018.

Discreetly desirable