There are some wines, I imagine, even the most well-connected journalists and wine writers hanker to try. This is no doubt true, even for the likes of Neal Martin, and Tim Atkin MW.

We watch them tweeting and writing about the celestial great and the good at some of the most extraordinary wine events, restaurants, even countries. But I bet there are wines that even Neal wishes he knew better.

For us mere mortals, our lists are long. For me? Never tasted Lafite. Never had Haut Brion (Actually twice. Blind. Once with a cold in a job interview.) Never had a glass of Margaux, and don’t even get me started on Domaine de la Romanée-Conti… I mean who cares anyway, huh? (I do…)

Also, we become increasingly well aware that in this day and age, we are exponentially less likely to ever see them. You have to suck in hard and let it go. It’s as hard as letting go of that one love of your life, that didn’t love you back. A part of you thinks, “I could have made an honest wine of her. I could. She’ll regret it one day. I would have been the best taster she ever had.” But you just have to let go.

Then you lower your standards. At the risk of getting hurt again, you go to one Australian and Chilean wine tasting after another (although I’m told that there are a few sirens there too. Oh wherefore art thou, Wendouree?)

It’s so you can regain sobriety and poise, rather than throwing yourself at the next Barbaresco you can find and declaring mad passionate love to it. Looking down the barrel of a top Chilean Cabernet, you most probably say to yourself, “It’s nice, but I’m in control. I’m never going to love this wine as much as it wants me. Besides, I’m on the rebound.” It feels safe. You’re never going to wish for something out of your reach again. Look, I’m not stupid. My infatuation with ‘her’, Miss Margaux Leadbetter, almost certainly has an allure that’s part celeb and status, but am I not good enough for a wine like that?

Then it happens. You are invited to a killer party, with a room so full of hot wines that you chance your arm once more.

This happened to me very recently. Just as I thought that I would NEVER try one of my dream wines again, my old pal Richard Bampfield MW invited me to a blending seminar with Pierre-Olivier Clouet, Gérant Technique at Château Cheval Blanc.

Crikey! Thanks Richard! This was better than writing a contact description for me on My Single Friend. I mean a room full of White Horses? I couldn’t fail to find my future bride, surely.

Did I have any previous with this Keira Knightly lookalike? Well I did meet her once. It was 1997, she was still in bed, and had no make-up on. (It was a 1996 barrel-sample.) She was pure, gentle, beautifully elegant, but it felt wrong to like this nubile, crimson glass of wine as much as I did, but I knew what she was going to become. Standing in front of her dad, Pierre Lurton, I blushed. (Maybe Stanley Kubrick could have directed ‘Sideways II, A new dawn…’)

I had also read the late great Edmund Penning-Rowsell’s effusions on this legendary wine estate. It was his favourite Bordeaux and he once described it as the Nuits St. Georges of the right-bank. What was I to do? This wasn’t the first time I had begun to fall for someone by what they looked like in print. Penning-Rowsell’s descriptions of this wine read like love-letters. Now here I was, going to the family Christmas party.

It was quite a large gathering in an historic building near Tower Hill. I sat at right at the front with half a dozen Riedel Bordeaux glasses in front of me. The point of the whole exercise was to listen to Pierre-Oliver explaining, in reasonably layman’s terms, the various vineyard parcels that they have at Cheval Blanc, why they were special and how they decided to blend their latest offering, the 2012.

P-O was incredibly open. Not the honesty I have come to expect from Bordeaux royalty. He allowed us to taste sub blends of each grape variety planted on each soil type. Unusually, Cheval Blanc has no limestone plots, something that I feel really defines St. Emilion for me. St. Emilion has a sunny smile, reminiscent of Barbaresco to Pomerol’s Barolo. Cheval Blanc is definitely Barolo. No sunny summer linen suits here. Cheval Blanc wears a well-cut charcoal pin-stripe.

I imagined, after the slightly less favourable reports of the vintage that this whole exercise was some kind of ruse to flatter their actions in 2012. Far from it. We were allowed to make our own decisions about whether we liked the cuvées, and they have clearly made a very nice wine. A very nice claret actually.

Now, that is a description that I find almost impossible to attach to the über-ripe, alcoholic wines made in 2009 and 2010. Sure, they are silky, sexy and flattering in their youth, but I can’t help thinking that they will all exhibit premature middle-aged spread when they finally reach their late twenties. (Yep. Mea culpa. I do not count them as classic vintages in the same way that 1990, 2000 and 2005 and even 2001 clearly are. You will see. You will all see…)

So what did we try apart from that? Well there is one sample that will stay with me forever. Having tasted a myriad of 2012 components, we were treated to finished, bottled library samples of the final blend of the 2001 Cabernet Franc and Merlot components before they were put together to make Le Grand Vin.

Next to me was my good friend Ben Llewelyn, patron of Carte Blanche Wines, a fine taster indeed. When we both reached the Cabernet Franc component, we stopped, looked at each other and silently mouthed the word ‘Phwoarrr’, before almost collapsing in minor euphoric hysterics. We spent the rest of the tasting giggling inanely. That’s him in the bottom right hand corner.

With his usual economy of words, he said, “I’d drink that.” So would I, I thought, before reminding him that they only bottle two cases of this, making it one of the rarest ‘1^st Growth’ bottlings in the history of Bordeaux. However it was singularly the finest Cabernet Franc I have ever tasted. It was svelte, dense, floral (I finally got to see what this ‘violets’ malarky in top Bordeaux is all about.), minerally (like licking unfired china), very very long, packed from arse-hole to beak with damson and black cherry. Completely, utterly divine. Of course it was. It was worth a million billion pounds. But it’s always nice to have your benchmark raised.

However, every Morcombe needs its Wise, and once the supple, joyful, mouth-drenching Merlot component had been added, ilt was bottled. That was our next sample, and my first ever chance to taste the complete article. Château Cheval Blanc 2001. I even like saying it out loud. Almost as much as I don’t like saying Château Troplong-Mondot 2003.

It was a miracle. I haven’t had many Bordeaux epiphanies, but this was one of them. To recall, there’s Haut Bailly and Lynch Bages 1985, Pichon Lalande 1983, and 1989, Clerc Milon 1990, La Lagune 1982, but, in a lifetime of drinking not many others. Knowing that this is going to get better for some time to come, I would maybe like to own a bottle of this one day. It’s a relative bargain at £200 odd, compared to the trillion quid the 100 Parker-rated 2000 is selling for. I mean how much better, if at all, can it be?

We then finished with the 2004 and 2010 Grand Vins (as well as tasting their little sisters, Les Petits Chevaux) In the 2004 there was a slight meanness and shade that I have seen in some wines in the right bank in that vintage that was largely absent in any of the Médocs that I have enjoyed.

And then there was the 2010. Yup. High extract. High Alcohol (although not as high as some), viscous, turbid, and, well, 'excessible’. All things I hate in Bordeaux reds.

Bordeaux should never be over-the-top, and this isn’t as brazen as some, but knowing the price, I would rather drink Inglenook or Phelps Insignia from the Napa, or Penley Estate Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon from Coonawarra. I just don’t see the magic. Everyone else does, so no problem there.

I left without a bride, but I was charged. Girded, masculated, as if I had just left Stringfellows after consuming a magnum of Tat. As it were.

What was I to do? I was reminded of the feeling of emptiness that I was experienced prior to the tasting.

Oh, if only the story ended there…