- Petrus’s harvests were used to make a £100,000 sangria
- The wine was once loved by Queen Elizabeth and the Kennedys.
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Wine connoisseurs are outraged by a video showing wine-goers carelessly pouring dozens of bottles of vintage Petrus wine into a glass container to make a £100,000 sangria.
Video footage showed customers at La Guérite restaurant on Sainte-Marguerite Island, off Cannes, clapping and whistling as they mixed two world-renowned Petrus vintages together with ice cubes, oranges and other ingredients.
A man was seen licking a bottle as he poured its contents into the container.
The party-goers, whose names have not yet been released, were seen pouring the vintages – a 2006 vintage that costs around €3,800 (£3,200) a bottle, and a 2011 vintage that costs around €3,200 (£2,700) – in August. But it was not until French newspaper La Figaro picked up the story that condemnation became widespread.
Philippe Faure-Brac, a well-known sommelier, told The Times it was “like using a Picasso or a Van Gogh to make fire”.
A video shows customers at the La Guérite restaurant on the island of Sainte-Marguerite, opposite Cannes, cheering and whistling as they mixed two world-renowned Petrus vintages in a glass bowl.
The vintages, a 2006 which costs around €3,800 (£3,200) a bottle, and a 2011 which costs around €3,200 (£2,700), were used to make the concoction.
‘It is a wine with a gastronomic vocation par excellence. Why not enjoy it in a very festive way? Putting it in a sangria is not its vocation.’
Petrus became a favourite of the then Princess Elizabeth in the 1940s, after Marie-Louise Loubat, his owner at the time, sent a box to the UK.
She fell in love with the red wine and later invited Loubat to serve it at her wedding.
The wine was also served to John F. Kennedy and his wife Jackie, both well-known Francophiles who declared their love for wine, greatly increasing its popularity in the US.
The vineyard produces only 30,000 bottles of Petrus per year on its 10 hectares of land.
Legendary wine critic Robert Parker previously said of the 2006 Petrus that it had “notes of sweet caramelized black cherries and wild berries with plenty of spice, earth and a hint of herbaceousness.”
He said the 2011 vintage had “subdued but intriguing aromas of kirsch, raspberry jam, wood spice and blackberries.”