World's Most Expensive Wines

Who says the French are bad in business? Château Pétrus is the preferred wine for big spenders. While the global credit crunch has forced many consumers to rein in spending, some just find it hard to say no to their favorite bottle of vin. Château Pétrus continues to sell for $1500 a bottle in current release. How many glasses are there in a bottle of wine? Depending on how much you pour, there are usually 5 glasses in one bottle. This would set you back pretty close to $300 for a glass (and we are not talking a full glass but half a glass). And prices tend to be higher, much higher, for better vintages. Take for example the 2005 Petrus which is already fetching over $8000 a bottle (for those of you who are still calculating, this is $1600 per glass). Gasp! Château Pétrus only produced 2400 12-bottle cases of this vintage. Limit your goods and prices go up, they must have thought.

Château Pétrus is without question one of the most expensive wines in the world. It is produced by a tiny little vineyard in the Bordeaux region of France, more precisely, the Pomerol Appellation. Château Pétrus has risen in the past 50 years from obscurity to being one of the most expensive of all wines. Before 1939, Château Pétrus was seen as a second-rate claret, not to be compared with the great wines of the Médoc, on the other side of the river Gironde. Lily-Paule Lacoste (previous manager who became close to becoming a billionaire before she lost most of her fortune) insisted her wine was good enough to be compared with the best. She began to charge accordingly and generated a mystique, which was magnified by the praise of the American critic Robert Parker.  And the rest is history.