The hundred-year gestation seemed to have made no difference to its strength or disposition. Maybe it wasn’t that old. Or perhaps he’d been sold a two-year-old distillation and hadn’t bothered to demand papers to prove its pedigree. It’s obviously not for drinking, but for display, like a Titian or a Picasso — except the wonder at the price is unaccompanied by any wonder at its artistry. However, as we finished our dinner, he produced a bottle of brandy, which he claimed was a hundred years old. I never heard him discussing brands of whisky."These are eight years old," my friend said. (I have tried this product placement before but still haven’t received a single bottle from Sula Promotions, if there is such an institution! How dare you use this newspaper to beg for wine! — Ed. For a billionaire, his house and its décor were very modest."You’ll be glad to get rid of these stale old wines," my friend added. I don’t do any of that but can certainly tell a Claret from a Burgundy or a Rioja and in the white wine universe can detect the difference between a Chardonnay and other grapes.

It tasted like any other. And now I wonder what he paid for it and am in awe at his generosity.We said it was a collector’s item but he insisted that he was honoured by the presence of TV writers and directors and had to splash out to mark the occasion. I am partial to Sauvignon Blanc and the Indian Sula brand is, when in the mother country, my choice. The friend I was with spotted a shelf of dusty bottles eight feet high on the wall behind the sales counter, which had escaped the makeover. They were eight-year-old clarets from famous chateaux. We asked the proprietor what those were.I don’t know about whiskies and brandies that have aged but being a wine-drinker am told that wines which remain in the bottle for more than a few decades are undrinkable. The brandy was uncorked. He climbed on a ladder and clandestinely, below the counter, wiped the dust off the bottles. Very fresh.)A wine shop in my neighbourhood changed hands.We walked out with a half crate of vintage claret for Polyester Satin Ribbons Manufacturers a tenth of what we would have paid in France. Perhaps our host, Mr Deep, had been a bit hasty and overgenerous in serving us the century-old brandy. "They are just now bought.3 crore whisky.I recall parties where guests talked about buying expensive bottle of black, blue or whatever label of Johnnie Walker they exclusively drank. Price is what fools pay. The realisation that there was a beverage called a single malt came later and with it the awareness that each Indian pretentious, snobbish or pretend connoisseur would pronounce that they only touched such-and-such malt. Stopping there soon after their takeover I looked through the shelves and couldn’t see anything I deemed drinkable."What’s a jalebi but sugar friedAnd where the infant who never criedWhere the lover who’s never liedOr the wind-blown willow that never sighed?"From The Diary of Rosemary Marlowe by BachchooMy father, an Armyman, would pour himself a whisky each evening, reserving Sunday afternoons for beer with friends and fellow officers on the lawns of our cantonment bungalows." I was sure at least one or two of them would search for the Vermillion that went beyond the Red, Black and Blue.My grandfather, in his retirement, was a collector of stamps. He looked doubtful but quoted a very derisory price — what we would pay for one his Liebfraumilch rubbish.Acquaintances of mine, fellow wine-quaffers pretend to be experts — the sort that twirl spoonfuls of wine in a wine glass, take sniffs and watch the "tears", the transparent films that stick to the side of the glass, to assess the alcoholic content.This consideration came to mind when I read about the Rs 7. Our nana boasted about their rise in price over the years just as people who trade in Bitcoin do today.Of course, Indian whisky buffs nowadays know what they’re touting and some can probably catalogue the shelves of Edinburgh airport’s duty-free."Must be mistake on label," the proprietor said. I grew up thinking they were all called "Scotch". "I think it’s only sold to British aristocrats. And just as with the Macallan whisky, they sell as collectors’ items."

Bring the others down, we’ll have all six," I said. For me the wonderous issue would be "which idiot paid this price for a bottle of booze?"Some years ago in Birmingham the scion of a capitalist trading company, a Sikh gentleman who was graciously lending us his premises for a TV series, invited us to dinner.  To this day, gentle reader, I protest I feel a pang of guilt when I recall swindling poor Mr Patel who didn’t realise that in the realm of wines old is gold. The new proprietors were an Indian family who brightened up the shop with shiny refrigerators and shelves full of cheap Australian, Chilean and South African wines."We asked him how much he’d charge for them. He had 10 albums full of them with a few pages reserved for three, which the Stanley Gibbons catalogues pronounced as rare and outrageously priced."Ah, but have you ever tried the Johnnie Walker Vermillion Label?" I once asked in such company. But even they may not have heard of Macallan Valerio Adami, a bottle of which sold at an auction last week for £848,750 — that’s about Rs 73,000,000!It was distilled in 1926 and bottled in 1986. Cheers!.It was only on coming to England that I became aware of brands and preferences for them. He bequeathed them to my mamu who may have made a tidy sum from these rarities.