Henry Jeffreys has narrated this article for you to listen to.
Professional Englishmen and women – doctors, accountants and even journalists – could once afford to drink first-growth claret like Château Latour on a regular basis. In 1972, when the Daily Telegraph’s Guide to the Pleasures of Wine was published, Pomerol was still an obscure corner of Bordeaux, known for offering ‘very good value’.
Those days are long gone. Prices began to take off in the 1980s, with Auberon Waugh blaming ‘American millionaires looking to impress their guests’. The 1982 Bordeaux vintage was highly lauded by a then-unknown young lawyer called Robert Parker Jnr who would go on to become the most influential wine critic in the world. After this, anything Parker recommended became unaffordable to most British wine-lovers. In his diaries, Alan Clark lamented the soaring prices of his favourite wines. Château Palmer, once an accessible indulgence, had reached £100 a bottle. That now sounds like a bargain.
Next, the Americans discovered Burgundy, a region hitherto only really appreciated in Europe. Between 2004 and 2024 a bottle of Gevrey-Chambertin Premier Cru Clos St Jacques from Armand Rousseau rose from £52 to around £2,000. Middle-class British drinkers who had cellars full of French greats realised that their wines were far too valuable to drink, so they sold them. Wine became a commodity to be traded rather than enjoyed.
If the 200 per cent tariffs on EU wine and spirits that Donald Trump is threatening go ahead, this might be about to change. Without the richest country in the world snaffling up all the good stuff, the British might once again be able to afford to drink Château Palmer every now and then, instead of relying on Good Ordinary Claret.
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