Hailing from Pomerol in the famed Bordeaux region of France, Château Pétrus is the kind of wine that drinkers are lead to believe, can make dreams come true. This stuff is what the “build a wine cellar to impress your friends”, type of person spends years searching for. Yes, it’s probably very good wine but the problem is the vineyard is only 28.5 acres and they only make about 32,000 bottles (about 2,600 cases).
While you can buy bottles of Château Pétrus online and in restaurants, be prepared to trade your car for it. Old bottles fetch as much as $15,000 a piece while a bottle from the famed 2005 vintage goes for $5,000. This is the kind of stuff that only a small number of stores can get and they only sell it to their best customers. They let the chumps buy it for tens of thousands.
On top of that, the wine is 95% Merlot and 5% Cabernet Franc. It was actually the bottle they wanted Miles to be saving, but the vineyard refused to release their trademark. Instead, they went with a future Wine Porn; Cheval Blanc.
A store here in Indianapolis had a dozen or so bottles. One guy came in and bought them all. When asked what he planned to do with them, he said he was going to Hong Kong where he intended to flip them immediately.
Huh… that sounds like a REALLY good idea. I’m sure you could pay for most of your trip that way.
A store here in Boston sold a bottle of 2000 Lafite to a 22 year old Korean girl. She came in three weeks later looking at the second bottle of the same $850 wine. She said they “lost her luggage” when she flew home to give the bottle to her father. So… it could potentially work out against you.