“Sod the wine, I want to suck on the writing. This man White is an instinctive writer, bloody rare to find one who actually pulls it off, as in still gets a meaning across with concision. Sharp arbitrage of speed and risk, closest thing I can think of to Cicero’s ‘motus continuum animi.’

Probably takes a drink or two to connect like that: he literally paints his senses on the page.”


DBC Pierre (Vernon God Little, Ludmila’s Broken English, Lights Out In Wonderland ... Winner: Booker prize; Whitbread prize; Bollinger Wodehouse Everyman prize; James Joyce Award from the Literary & Historical Society of University College Dublin)


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03 January 2009

SALE: 190 ACRES Cab, Cab Fr, Mer, PLUS HOUSE


Not To Mention That Magnificent Sandstone Erection

Latour Up For Grabs


Pity I blew everything over Christmas ... if I’d known this was coming up I would have stayed in bed and saved.


Peter Gago thinks he and I should go halves, but when you’re bidding against the likes of that lovely thirsty boy Gérard Depardieu and his mate from down the road, Bernard Magrez - the hottest contenders so far – how much can they drink? – I think we might have to pull in Lord Twining, the Shierlaws and The Sherrif for back-up tease.


The pearl of the Medoc has obviously got too heavy for François Pinault, president of PPR, which is a sort of mini version of the LVMH handbag factory.


Lazard Freres is the agent, and they’re talking about something to the tune of two to three hundred million US in the way of consideration.


Frank must be on the vinegar stroke. He also owns Christie’s, the hammer house that knocked a case of the 1961 down for US$170,000 to a Chinese bloke in Honkers last month. He’s got Christie’s on the block, too. I wonder who’ll bang the hammer for that then?


Château Latour has 190 acres of cabernet sauvignon and cabernet franc, but uses only the 115 acres around the house in the Grand Vin de Château Latour.


Bugger.


Give us a call if you’re interested.


STOP PRESS (BUT NOT THE LATOUR PRESS) -- 24 heures later:

All hell apparently broke loose when skrillionaire François Pinault heard that his consideration of the sale of Ch. Latour had hit the cobweb.

Artemis, Frank’s cover for his 94% slice of Latour, is in deepening merde since all the money in the world disappeared, like a lot of other stuff, and while there’s lots of sacre blueing going down, Bernie Magrez, mate of Frank and The Big Dipper, is suddenly all morose and sullen about the rumours of his bail-out of the world’s most expensive dovecote.

Every really rich bugger in the known universe gets half a mongrel when one of these king-hell chateaux wobbles on its axis. They all think they can suddenly play chess!

Good one to watch.

Just wait for the Chinoise!

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