Vintage bottles of wine are selling at Sotheby's for outlandish prices.
Banking on wine may be as old as the hills, but nowadays excited bidders seldom get to raise a goblet with the same enthusiasm.
These wines are deemed 'too good to drink' and often spend the rest of their lives languishing in a dark, climate-controlled cellar.
It is ironic that magnificent vintages end up as unreal and remote a commodity as pork bellies or tin futures.
This may be because many of these high-rollers came late to wine. Perhaps initially intimidated by phrases like 'surprisingly coy . . . faint notes of rhubarb . . . bombastic on the tongue', they now retaliate by making rare and sought-after bottles inaccessible to ordinary wine-lovers.
Luckily, I was weaned on wine.
As a toddler, I licked fermented elderberry juice from my grandfather's finger. Rose was poured as casually as Coca-Cola at our dinner table.