A fifth of this year's Bordeaux wine harvest has been destroyed by two severe hail bombardments in three days.

Who'll give me £600m for a nice little property in Pauillac? It has earnings potential of about £10m a year and the three features required of a top wine property: prestige, great wine and location. Since François H Pinault, the French luxury goods tycoon who also owns Christie's, is down to his last billion or so, he's apparently putting Château Latour on the market, but is unlikely to accept as little as the low estimate of £150m for one of the most prized jewels in the Bordeaux crown, especially as first growths (the others are Haut-Brion, Lafite, Margaux and Mouton-Rothschild) rarely come on the market. Going, going ...

Bordeaux president Jean-Louis Triaud will not even contemplate the departure of striker Fernando Cavenaghi to Tottenham in the January transfer window.

While France's first lady was seducing the audience of Later with Jools Holland, the country itself was coming to terms with the fact that this year's wine crop will be overtaken by Italy by some 500 million bottles. However, at least one French commentator had the nous to point out that its exports were still nearly double those of Italy. Anyway, he went on, "we are responding to the needs of a market that wants to drink less but better". He would say that, but over the past few years, competition from the New World has put a much-needed boot into the Gallic derrière. The French have also had to contend with the outlawing of advertising wine on the net because of its stringent anti-alcohol laws.

Britain is rediscovering its 800 years old taste for Bordeaux wines. After a collapse in sales to the UK five years ago, exports of medium and higher quality red Bordeaux, or claret, are booming – defying the economic crisis which haunts other parts of the French wine industry.

There's an old maxim in the wine trade that the best way to make a small fortune out of wine is to start with a larger one. Despite the occasional headline splash of untold riches made from fabulous rare bottles, like the 1811 Château d'Yquem which recently fetched £37,900, the mundane truth is that successful investing in wine requires a combination of caution, knowledge, experience and skill; and add a dose of luck for good measure.

Roger Landes parachuted twice into occupied France as an agent of Britain's Special Operations Executive during the Second World War. Dropped originally to work as a wireless operator, he went on to arm and organise several thousand resistance fighters in efforts to harass German forces after D-Day.