But a Christie’s sale last July helped to raise the profile of Italy’s best wines

But a Christie’s sale last July helped to raise the profile of Italy’s best wines. A case of the 1985 Tuscan red, I Sodi di San Niccolo, for instance, exceeded its estimate fourfold to sell for pounds 1,155. Barolo, arguably Italy’s best red, suffers from the Burgundy factor, but a brand name can make all the difference.Angelo Gaja features in a list of Italian blue chips – which also includes the Tuscan reds Sassicaia, Ornellaia and Solaia – published recently in the Wine Spectator, America’s influential fine-wine magazine. In Burgundy, the roll call is pretty much limited to Domaine de la Romanee- Conti’s La Romanee, La Tache, and Montrachet.

The Rhone’s brightest stars go little further than Jaboulet’s Hermitage La Chapelle and Marcel Guigal’s three strictly allocated “crus”, La Mouline, La Landonne and La Turque.Italian and Spanish wines have, until recently, largely failed as fine-wine brands, probably because, as with Burgundy, no one outside Spain or Italy (and probably not that many within) really knew which were the best wines or the best vintages. The demand for young wines, fuelled by the lack of really good Bordeaux vintages between 1990 and 1995, has been a major factor in the soaring prices of the two most recent Bordeaux vintages. Although considered exorbitant at the time, 1995 now looks almost a snip compared with the cream of Bordeaux 1996. 1996 Chateau Margaux, for instance, which cost around pounds 800 this spring, is now changing hands (although not yet in bottle) for pounds 2,000 a case – more than any other vintage, that is, between 1961 and 1982.Outside Bordeaux, few wines achieve the status of a luxury brand.

This is due, according to Christie’s Price Index of Vintage Wine, “to the reliability and predictability of good claret”. Having sold half his cellar, he is now, says Christie’s, contemplating a shift in emphasis in favour of Italy, Spain and the top wines of Australia and California.
Traditionally, the fine-wine action has centred on Bordeaux because top Bordeaux is a marketable commodity. Before Andrew Lloyd Webber’s sale, the noble lord commented that one of his reasons for selling was “my liking for some recent vintages and New World wines which I’d like to get to know more about”. The same, it now emerges, is true of the anonymous Norwegian whose “Grand Crus” cellar fetched over pounds 7 million at Christie’s. France’s finest, Bordeaux in particular, have traditionally featured as the Cartiers of the international fine-wine market.