Few documents offer a better, more acute insight into the lives and means of the very rich than a top-end wine list. The hefty tome that is perhaps the world’s most extraordinary example of this, from Vienna’s five-star hotel Palais Coburg, sprawls across some 100 tightly spaced pages, with many prices running to the high three figures, and many more advertised with one of two pithy German euphemisms for “you almost certainly cannot afford this”: preis vor ort and raritat.
As out-of-this-world decadent as this kind of list undoubtedly is, I do understand the once in a lifetime appeal that leads some well-heeled wine lovers to save up for a night at the Palais Coburg or other blockbusting wine-led restaurants around the world, such as New York City’s Eleven Madison Park or London’s Sketch. Increasingly, however, you don’t have to be a plutocrat – or even, for one night only, pretend to be a plutocrat – to enjoy some of the best restaurant wines around.
