Collection: Great rarities

Some occasions ask for more than a good bottle. An eightieth birthday. Fifty years since a company was founded. A father who has already been given everything twice. This is the top of the catalogue, where the famous names and the famous years meet.

Bordeaux first growths from 1945, 1961 and 1982. Sauternes from 1947, 1959 and 1967. Vintage Port from 1945 and 1948, two of the very few years the shippers were willing to declare. Barolo from houses that still hold a library of old bottles, and Champagne from the 1950s, which survives in far smaller numbers than red wine of the same age. Prices here run well beyond the median of the shop, into four figures and occasionally past them, and each bottle is priced against what it genuinely costs us to secure.

Rarity raises the stakes on provenance, so we are stricter here than anywhere else. Every bottle at this level is bought to order from a professional European merchant; we check fill, label and capsule when it reaches us and photograph it before it ships. As with everything made before 1990, it is sold as a collectible object rather than with any promise of how it will taste.