Season two of The Gentlemen landed on Netflix with its usual mix of money, power and criminal chaos around Halstead Manor. But while most viewers will be tracking Eddie Horniman's latest problems, wine lovers have been pausing on something else: the bottles lining the dinner tables. During a lavish shooting-weekend dinner — guests including a Sheikh and an Italian gangster — the props department clearly didn't hold back. Pétrus, Masseto and Château Mouton Rothschild all make appearances.
The star of the show is the double magnum of Pétrus 2009 that Eddie uses to butter up Lord Hawthorne. We're talking about a three-litre format — four standard bottles — of a wine made from a tiny Pomerol vineyard in Bordeaux with tiny production and enormous collector demand. A normal 75cl bottle of Pétrus 2009 already runs to several thousand dollars; the double magnum has retail listings north of £40,000 (roughly $54,000). According to sommelier Michele Longari, the vintage is intensely concentrated, with plum, blackberry, mocha and chocolate giving way to truffle and leather as it ages.
Eddie also pulls out a Pétrus 1998 in another charm offensive — a bottle that, in good condition, still sits comfortably in the several-thousand-dollar bracket. Nearly three decades in bottle means those dark fruits have mellowed into savoury territory: truffle, forest floor, tobacco and leather, with silky tannins.
The Italian contingent gets its moment too. At dinner with Cico Maldini, a Masseto 1989 appears on screen — Merlot from Bolgheri in Tuscany, currently retailing around £1,400 ($1,900) a bottle. Choosing an early vintage from an estate that only came to prominence in recent decades is a nod to Masseto's role in the story of modern Italian fine wine; at this age, the appeal is complexity and texture rather than brute power.
Finally, there's the Château Mouton Rothschild 1989, generally worth several hundred dollars and carrying the house's tradition of artist-designed labels — the 1989 features work by Georg Baselitz. The fun detail: in the show it's declared corked. Longari notes the irony — even a great vintage with decades of careful storage can fall victim to cork taint, proof that fine wine is still a natural, imperfect product.
Why should a traveller care? Because these bottles point straight at the places behind them. Pomerol is one of Bordeaux's most collectible Right Bank appellations, an easy detour from Saint-Émilion with some of the most expensive vineyard land on earth. Bolgheri, on the Tuscan coast, has become a pilgrimage for Merlot fans, with a handsome cypress-lined boulevard leading into a village that pairs its wines beautifully with the region's seafood and wild boar. And Mouton Rothschild's Pauillac estate is among the few top Bordeaux châteaux with a genuinely excellent visitor experience, including its Museum of Wine in Art. Watch the series for the drama, then plan a cellar-door trip around what's in the glass.