Frightening tales of the financial markets have filled the papers for the past week or so, and I’m sure I’m not the only visitor to wikipedia looking up “volatility”, “margin call”, “naked short selling” and the like. It has been educating.

The wine market is thankfully much more simple, and much more stable. Essentially, I think, because merchants and customers buy and sell something that is tangible, something real. Much as the Americans refer to buying “en-primeur” as “futures”, there are no “fine wine derivatives” for the moment, something for which we can be grateful.

Compared with the financial markets, the fine wine market appears to be in excellent health. Our recent offer of 2006 Ch. Lynch-Bages was overwhelmingly successful, with more than 1,000 cases sold in 24 hours – our buyers are still making calls to Bordeaux to try and source more. And up the road at Christie’s, a private collection of 2000 Bordeaux realised a total of £1,654,775 with 2000 Ch. Lafite-Rothschild, a wine that is a good barometer of the market, fetching an impressive £10,925 per case from a trade buyer. That the first half of this collection was sold on “Meltdown Monday” and the second part, including the Lafite, sold the following Thursday is surely a good indicator of the wine market’s current good health.

Moreover, I guarantee that drinking a glass of Lafite is infinitely more pleasurable than eating a share certificate