Did they know what they were drinking?

On first hearing this story I felt a frisson of pleasure: how wonderful if some diners used to drinking a £10 Malbec had unwittingly spent an evening luxuriating in one of the world’s most hedonistic wine experiences. Even among fine wines, Le Pin is an icon: stratospherically expensive, made in minute quantities and much soughtafter.

Le Pin, one of the original “garage wines”, achieved fame relatively recently. It lies in Pomerol, on Bordeaux’s right bank, and until the late Seventies its wine (Merlot, with a tiny bit of Cabernet Franc) was blended with other local vineyards and sold only in Belgium. I should mention that whenever Bordeaux merchants taste a not-very-good wine, they often dismiss it with “one for the Belgians”.

Well, in 1979 Le Pin’s one hectare vineyard sold for a million francs to three Belgians who knew a good wine when they saw one. Their first vintage sold for 11 francs apiece. Ten years later it gained critical acclaim, in particular from Robert Parker, the influential American critic.

And thus began its ascent. So what differentiates this from a supermarket Merlot? I could wax lyrical but it’s easier to say it’s like asking the difference between a toddler’s fridge painting and a Monet.

Our lucky diners didn’t actually order any old wine either – it was a fine Bordeaux, a 2001 Chateau Pichon Longueville Comtesse de Lalande from the other side of the river. If you’re ordering this bottle, you know something about wine – but enough, I wonder, to notice when a different one arrives?

Although not at all like Le Pin, it is still extremely good. Victoria Moore, Wine Editor