Friends, rellies and the Social Services know that I am not averse to a glass of wine. After reading this story in the Daily Telegraph I now wish I’d kept some instead of just drinking it.

In September 1972 two friends and I (Jorge Potier and Colin McGill — where are they now?) had lunch at La Pyramide restaurant in Vienne, Isère. To wash it down I chose (overriding Jorge & Colin’s strenuous objections) a bottle of pre-phylloxera 1944 Romanée Conti. It was very good, as I recall, although the ‘44 was no match for the ‘45, one of the vintages of the century. They objected because it was so expensive — £14. The ‘45 was a staggering £24.

I bore the bottle home in triumph and placed it on my mantelpiece where it stood until one weekend I was away my Parisienne friend Claudine Fontanon and her sister Odile borrowed the flat. Claudine swears it was Odile who broke the bottle. All I have left is a happy memory and this murky photograph.

I see I’d also just scarfed a Château Lafite-Rothschild and a Château Latour. Hard times.

There’s no way we can make comparisons between then and now. That £14 would be worth £180 today, a massive amount to spend on a bottle of wine. The 1945 vintage would have cost £310. In a restaurant. Unthinkable. And now it’s been sold for £424,000.

Yet seven years later I spent the price of a terraced house in Hoxton on a computer far, far less powerful than the mobile phone in your pocket. So this is an If I Knew Then What I Know Now sort of posting.

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