It is worth looking at this website where all the wines were identified. The panel was given a clue as they were told only one bottle of wine was worth £595.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2698004/Could-YOU-tell-Lidls-5-99-claret-595-Grand-Cru-Our-thirsty-volunteers-tried-hilariously-humiliating-results.html.
So how did Oz do it? Well the Chateau Haut-Brion 1990 was by far the oldest wine in the selection and would have turned a brick red colour as part of the ageing process. Only a very good or exceptional wine would have maintained a concentrated fruit character over all those years and would have matured into to a wine complex enough to show tastes "reminiscent of pews in a cathedral, library books and old sofas."
Château Haut-Brion was rated as Premier Cru in the 1855 classification and is renowned as one of the world's top wines for both drinking and investment. This is why the price is so high.
An ordinary standard Bordeaux red would be well past its best after 20 years or so in the bottle and would be beginning to fade away. None of the other wines in the selection would have turned to the tawny colour as described. So well done Oz for your tasting, reasoning and experience.
Where Oz did better, if that were possible, was in recognising the 2009 vintage -Château Haut Batailley Pauillac 2009 (£23, M&S) but he did rather over estimate the price. This too is exceptionally good wine.
Oz also did very well to recognise the Château Pichon Longueville-Baron 2006 (£125, Majestic) was £120 a bottle but he did not identify the wine blind as far as I can see. This wine is a deuxième cru from Pauillac and has the potential to age as well as the Château Haut-Brion. However, the 2006, would not have turned to the same tawny colour. A case of the 1990 could set you back over £2,000.
Rose Prince and Tessa Cunningham did nowhere as well as Oz Clarke but I would not expect them to. They simply do not have Oz's tasting experience and knowledge of wine and its market. We often have off days when we do not taste wine so well.
Rose has been criticised on the following website for being humiliated at the tasting: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rose_Prince_(writer) but this is a bit strong and unfair. She guessed wrongly that the Saint-Emilion Grand Cru AOP Château du Cauze 2011 (£11.99, Lidl) was the £595 wine but this is of course very good wine and Rose spotted that blind. But she missed the Premier Cru wine. However, she did recognise the Château Haut-Brion as being very good wine and if you take away the brand name value perhaps it is only really worth £65 - such is the power of marketing and brand names.
Tessa Cunningham guessed wrongly that the Château Haut Batailley Pauillac 2009 (£23, M&S) was the top wine. This was not a bad guess: 2009 was a particularly good year and the wine could have been confused with Château Latour Pauillac 2009. This is just a snip at £720 a bottle. But how does this account for missing the key wine?
Tessa to her credit recognised that the 1990 Château Haut-Brion was something special but she could not link that with the market price.
Perhaps the test was not so easy.
One of my favourite wines Château Cantemerle was not rated well by Tessa - oh well we cannot all have my great sense of taste!
None of the panel was really perfect at guessing the prices and the "blind tasting " was really a bit of a gimmick but it must have been fun. In reality wine tasting and evaluation is fraught with difficulty and you can easily be caught out.
No bottle of wine costs more than about £10 to produce; not even the top investment wines. The Lidl Saint Emilion may not be as prestigious as a Premier Cru investment wine but its quality is not far off. The Lidl St Emilion is therefore exceptional value for money and wine lovers are lucky that bargains can still be found. As far as investment wines are concerned a lot of the price if not most of it is in the brand name and not in the absolute quality of the wine. The Daily Mail has done well to point all this out.
With a little bit of wine education , experience and knowledge and the ability to reason you too could recognise the £595 bottle especially when you are told that only one wine of this value is in the selection.
We have got a Lidl down the road so I am going off to find a bottle of St Emilion Grand Cru for £11. 99 and keep it for a couple of years longer to let the tannin soften a bit and then taste a really good wine.
We have got a Lidl down the road so I am going off to find a bottle of St Emilion Grand Cru for £11. 99 and keep it for a couple of years longer to let the tannin soften a bit and then taste a really good wine.
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