Icon wines at The Sampler

Had an incredible chance to taste some iconic wines this morning courtesy of north London wine merchant The Sampler. There's always a good range of interesting wines to taste here, courtesy of their multiple enomatic machines, but in the run up to Christmas they've put some serious icon wines on tasting, giving people the chance to see what all the fuss is about.

Unless your budget is pretty much limitless, I wouldn't steer you towards buying these sorts of bottles. For example, the £1700 a single bottle of Screaming Eagle costs could buy you 80 or 90 bottles of pretty delicous wine that would arguably give you a lot more pleasure over a consistent period. But it's really interesting to be able to try these wines for a lot less than it could otherwise cost, just because they're there, they're talked about and they are regarded as sort of benchmarks.

The tasting this morning contained some magical, almost spiritual wine moments, so good were some of these bottles. So to wring out the most from these experiences, I'm going to be drip feeding you an icon a day.

Coming up, in no particular order:

• DRC Grands Echezeaux 1971
• Screaming Eagle 1996
• Hermitage La Chapelle 1978 and 1990
• Lafite 1982
• Petrus 1978
• Ogier Belle Helene Cote Rotie 1999