The revelation that Hollywood actor, serial womaniser, reputed tattoo freak and bon viveur Johnny Depp paid £11,000 sterling (€16,000) for a bottle of red Burgundy in a London restaurant last weekend will surprise no student of the subject of wine and power. The restaurant, the recently refurbished Mirabelle, is infamous and has been for the best part of this century.
It is situated in the lushest, tart-bestrewn street in Mayfair and its staff, if you telephone and enquire for more details of Mr Depp's evening or even ask the precise vineyard of the wine in question, will politely tell you that they have been "instructed to give no comment". We do, though, know that the wine came from the world's most celebrated wine estate, Domaine de la Romanee-Conti, and was of the 1978 vintage.
However, unsurprised though I am by this incident, I am not inured from feeling extremely jealous. It is simply not fair that the same man can go to bed with Vanessa Paradis (having already tasted, inter alia, Winona Ryder and Kate Moss) and drink a 1978 RomaneeConti. It is a very rare wine indeed. And since it cost the sum it did, I am assuming that the La Romanee-Conti itself was the vineyard as this is the most valuable piece of agricultural dirt in France (maybe in the whole of Europe). It is ahead in perceived value, and repute, of the other notable vineyards in which the Romanee-Conti domaine owns vines - La Tache, Richebourg, Grands-Echezeaux and Romanee-Saint-Vivant.
La Romanee-Conti is also a so-called grand cru, entitled to a complete official Appellation Controlee in its own right. It is owned wholly by the Domaine and comprises only 4 1/2 acres of vines. This makes it one of the tiniest Appellation Controlee in all of France. The yield from its vines is small: not many more than 5,000 bottles a year are produced. Personally, I know of no human being who has actually drunk the stuff. I am ignorant of its charms beyond what I have read in history books and my tasting of wines of the same year from neighbouring vineyards, which I have, very infrequently, been offered.
Mr Depp, if I have guessed the right vineyard and the man wasn't splurging on, say, a product from the less fantastic but nonetheless also mightily expensive La Tache, should have had an extraordinary experience. The vintage of the wine he consumed was such that it would be in sublime drinking condition (barring a duff cork) and I would guess that, if the wine was as good as it could be, it was utterly beyond reproach. It would have had a concentrated richness, dazzling complexity and a level of polished perfection that Mr Depp doubtless seeks to provide in his screen performances.
I do not censure the man for buying the wine or for sharing it with loved ones. I wish I had been the actor's guest that night so that I might have experienced the wine for myself. But I was not. I was out drinking with friends and the delicious red wine we drank cost not much more than a fiver a bottle.
Which brings us to the realm of worth. Or does it? Is it remotely sensible even to ask if any wine is worth £11,000?
Well, it admits Mr Depp to a short but celebrated list of men (and it is an exclusively male calling) who seek social satisfaction by putting their hands in their pockets, extracting the fattest wad possible, and blowing it on a single wine bottle. But those who deride the extravagant human beings comprising this list are simply green with envy that they cannot join it.
To drink a bottle of wine costing £11,000 takes a lot of guts. It transcends mere thirst. It goes way beyond the understandable desire to find exactly the right wine for the dish on the plate. We are, when we discuss this sort of thing, in the realms of complete romance. Anything goes. We might just as profitably dispute the origins and veracity of the Trojan war.
I do not know Mr Depp's motives for coughing up 11 grand for his bottle of wine. I only hope he loved the experience of drinking the liquid rather than what it cost him to acquire the bottle.
