You don’t need to be an investment genius to appreciate how much Bordeaux’s en primeur prices have gone up in recent years. No doubt they might have looked expensive 25 years ago. But with the benefit of hindsight, they now look ludicrously cheap. The 82 first growths, for instance, came out at about £275 a case and anyone who bought them has made money from day one, hand over fist. Now, some of them are selling for between £15,000 and £16,000 a case.

As prices and worldwide demand for great cru classé claret increased during the past 10 or 15 years, however, the Bordelais decided to indulge in a bit of profit-taking of their own. So, rather than letting investors have all the early upside, more and more of the top chateaux began to release their wines at prices approaching full market value. Of course, it hasn’t always worked out quite according to plan. A case in point was 1997 when they overpriced their crop with the result that the wines failed to sell through the market and subsequently fell back in value. But generally speaking, the highly commercial Bordelais have more or less been bang on the money ever since.