There is a second-growth Sauternes called Chateau Suduiraut, known to every reader of Brideshead Revisited as the wine that sets the tale in motion. "Don't pretend you have heard of it," Sebastian admonishes as he delivers a bottle to that fatal picnic, and as a result we all know of it.
Suduiraut is comparable in a good year to nearby Chateau d'Yquem, and at a third of the price or less. There are those who are distressed when rich people spend hundreds, sometimes even thousands of pounds on a bottle of wine, while others are obliged to drink water.
But if you have a lot of money, throwing it away is best - best for you, because it frees you of a burden, best for the recipient, who needs it more than you do (otherwise why are you throwing it away?), best for all of us, who are somewhere downstream from your folly. And the more perishable and pointless the thing on which your money is squandered, the more worthy the act. The worst use of money is to add to the junk-pile of old cars or kitsch houses, in the manner of Bill Gates. The best use is to buy mega-expensive wine, so casting the loot once more on the tide of chance.
Which brings me back to Suduiraut. This wine suffers from the comparison with Yquem. For Yquem has absolutely no market among real wine lovers. If they have enough money for a bottle of Yquem, they will buy half a dozen Suduiraut or Lafaurie-Peyraguey instead. Yquem can maintain its price only because the world is full of stinking-rich vulgarians who know nothing about wine, and therefore buy the best. But, as with women and horses, the real best is second-best.
Just behind Suduiraut, unknown to most Sauternes addicts, is a third-best wine which, in a good year, is comparable to its illustrious neighbour. This wine - Chateau Briatte, the pride and joy of Michel Roudes, its proprietor - is neither a classed growth, nor anything else that might inflate its price. But it produces a rich elixir from old vines, and has received a gold medal in the Paris Concours General. If you appreciate the honeyed flavour and meadow-sweet nose of Suduiraut, you can find versions of them at half the price in Briatte.
Chateaux Wines of Bristol (enquiries@chateauxwines.co.uk) - that tiny firm which never has more than a few items for sale - tries to maintain a stock of Chateau Briatte, from whichever recent year has been most successful. The vintage currently on offer is 1998, maturing fast but with many years of glory before it.
At £15.10 a bottle, this is as cheap as a good Sauternes can be: a wine to be enjoyed after dinner, perhaps with some nuts or fruitcakes of the kind described by Evelyn Waugh.
