A bottle claimed as the only known existing Impériale of Cheval Blanc 1947 was offered in Geneva on 16 November at an estimate of CHF150,000-250,000. But its price shot upwards like Lake Geneva’s Jet d’Eau and it sold for CHF298,500 (including premium).

The Cheval Blanc Impériale and other wines apparently came from a private cellar and had been “reconditioned at the chateau in 2010 (with) new capsules, new labels and new original wooden cases from the château.”

With reconditioned wines, one is reminded of Pope’s line, “Once a flock bed, but repaired with straw”. The record price shows that collectors are happy to pay a premium for well-stored wine, even if it has undergone palingenesis with a new cork and (probably) some younger wine added to it. But there are many neophyte collectors in Asia and elsewhere these days, who have little experience of what an old wine should look, smell and taste like. To drink reconditioned wine is, as T.S. Eliot put it, to have the experience but miss the meaning.

Conditions are ripe for fraud. Wine producers’ outrage at fake wine is like Claude Rains’s shock at learning that there was gambling at Rick’s place in Casablanca. And yet they continue to accept wines to be reconditioned.