Adieu, Château Margaux, Château Haut-Brion, Château Latour, Château Lafite-Rothschild and Château Mouton-Rothschild. Adieu, too, Château Pétrus, Château Ausone and Château Cheval-Blanc.

Sorry, mes amis, but after 35 years of close acquaintance, I must sever our relationship. It’s nothing personal. I think you’re all great wines -- très, très grand, in fact. But alas, you’ve priced yourselves way out of my league -- indeed, way out of almost everyone’s league. I love you, Château Ausone, but not enough to pay $11,000 now for a case of 2006 to be delivered two years hence.

After all, ma chere Ausone, you and your fabled cohorts are only wine. You’re not a Maserati Quattroporte. You’re not a Kandinsky painting. You’re merely ephemera. Delicious ephemera, yes, but ephemera still. Your glory lasts only as long as it takes to consume a bottle. Then, pfft, you’re gone. The experience you provide, no matter how orgiastic, is fleeting, evanescent. A Kandinsky, on the other hand, is always there, always palpable, always delivering the goods. It doesn’t run out. It doesn’t go sour.

I can understand putting up big money to buy a car or a work of art, but I find it scandalous (I almost said “criminal”) that anyone would pay huge sums for wine. It sends all the wrong signals, suggesting that wine is strictly for the wealthy elite. Yet there are countless good wines out there whose purchase does not require a second mortgage. Indeed, Bordeaux has many of these. The Fifth Growth Pauillac Pontet Canet, for instance, is producing outstanding wine today, and sells for a pittance compared to its near neighbor Mouton-Rothschild. Better still is Jean-Philippe Janoueix’s Château Croix Mouton, a routinely rich, full-fruited Bordeaux Supérieur that sells for under $20 a bottle, yet outshines wines selling for two to three times the price. It may not have the allure or mystique of a classified growth, but who cares? It’s good wine!

And that brings me to my point. Wine is a beverage. It has two uses: to slake thirst and to elicit pleasure. It is not an objet d’art to be put on a pedestal and ogled by rich know-nothings. It is something to be drunk and enjoyed, hopefully with good friends and with good food. To that end, it should be somewhat affordable and reasonably accessible. Bordeaux’s big-name châteaux, however, see things differently. Their business is no longer about wine; it’s about luxury goods. And so they’ve turned their backs on the great majority of wine drinkers, preferring, instead, to deal with a narrow audience for whom wine is more status symbol then beverage. As for me, I love wine qua wine, and will continue to drink and enjoy it. I just won’t be drinking First Growths.