This is what fine wine cost in Gleneagles Hotel 60 years ago

July 28, 2026
Uncategorized

Having been given a wine list from Scotland’s Gleneagles Hotel printed in the mid-1960s, Patrick Schmitt MW looks at the cost of drinking Champagne, Bordeaux, Burgundy and Provençal rosé back then, versus today.

There’s been much recent commentary on the high cost of drinking wine in hotels and restaurants, including on this website, with the suggestion being that sought-after bottles are becoming prohibitively expensive in the on-trade, and that demand for them is softening as a result.

Restaurants derive a significant share of their profits from drinks, and typically apply a percentage margin to bottles – which makes higher-priced wines disproportionately expensive by the time they reach a wine list.

But how much has this actually changed? I’ve been able to draw some comparisons using a wine list from Gleneagles Hotel published around 1965, loaned to me by our long-standing city editor, Ron Emler.

Back then, as now, the Gleneagles Hotel in Perthshire was known for far more than its golf course, serving as a luxury playground for international elites, with Hollywood stars and star sportspeople among its summer guests.

Its wine list reflected the tastes of the era’s rich socialites, featuring famous Champagne houses, first-growth Châteaux from Bordeaux, grands crus from Burgundy, and a single Provençal rosé – priced higher than either a premier cru Meursault or a deuxième cru claret on the same list.

Unlike today, the largest category of white wine by far was German (see pictures, bottom), split between Rhine and Moselle sections plus a lone ‘Franconia’ entry – comfortably outnumbering white Bordeaux, which was itself slightly ahead of Burgundy. Reds were mainly Bordeaux and Burgundy, with surprisingly few vintages stated; rosé ran to five entries, including Mateus from Portugal; and, curiously for a Scottish hotel, there was considerably more Cognac on the list than Scotch.

Drawing a direct comparison with Gleneagles’ wine offer today is complicated by the fact that many of the historic wines are no longer made, and because dining at the resort now spans several restaurants, including the two-Michelin-starred Andrew Fairlie. Under the same ownership is also The Gleneagles Townhouse in Edinburgh, whose list is published online and could equally be used for comparison. For this piece, I’ve matched examples from the 1960s list against Andrew Fairlie’s current list, and – where possible – against a contemporary retail source.

For the historic figures, the 1960s list is priced in shillings and pence (20 shillings to the pound). To convert into today’s money, I’ve used a ×25 multiplier throughout, based on Bank of England/ONS composite price index data, which puts cumulative UK inflation between 1965 and 2026 at just over 25 times.

Champagne: Krug and Pol Roger

Krug is a natural place to start, given how central it is to Andrew Fairlie’s own offering — the house is effectively an ‘ambassador’ for the restaurant. The prestige cuvée on the historic list, a 1961 Private Cuvée Extra Sec, is no longer made; it’s a precursor to today’s Krug Grande Cuvée.

On the 1960s list, the Krug is 63 shillings a bottle (£3.15) – £78.75 in today’s money. A contemporary retail source, Castle & Co (a British wine and spirit merchant with outlets across London, Surrey, Oxfordshire and Dorset), shows fine Champagne selling on the shelf for around 25-35 shillings in the same period – £31.25 to £43.75 today – implying a restaurant markup of somewhere between 80% and 150%, depending on where in that retail range you benchmark.

Today, Krug Grande Cuvée 172ème Édition is £325 at Andrew Fairlie against a £240 retail price – a markup of about 35%. Krug has become dramatically more expensive in absolute terms, but the restaurant’s percentage markup on it has, if anything, come down.

Pol Roger tells a different story. Its ‘Extra Cuvée Réserve’ is 58 shillings (£2.90) on the historic list – £72.50 today – against a 1960s retail price of 33 shillings (£1.65), or £41.25 adjusted, a markup of around 76%. The nearest equivalent today is Pol Roger ‘White Foil’ Brut NV, though Andrew Fairlie lists it only by the magnum, at £295, against a retail price of around £120 for the same format – a markup of roughly 146%. The size mismatch (bottle vs magnum) means this isn’t a perfect comparison, but the direction is clear: the markup on this brand has expanded substantially.

German Riesling

Off-dry German wines dominated Gleneagles’ 1960s list, and British taste has shifted so completely since that a direct comparison is difficult – very little German wine, sweet or dry, features on the on-trade list today. Andrew Fairlie’s one Riesling Spätlese is a 2010 ‘Kreuznacher Krötenpfuhl’ from Dönnhoff in the Nahe, at £112 against a retail price of around £50 – a markup of about 124%.

The 1960s list carries a Rauenthaler Burggraben Spätlese from the Rheingau (1963) at 40 shillings (£2) – £50 today. A retail comparison from the same era, Johannisberger Erntebringer Riesling Spätlese at 27 shillings and sixpence (£1.38), converts to around £34-35 today, implying a 1960s markup of roughly 45%. The two wines are from different sub-regions and producers, so this illustrates a category trend rather than a like-for-like comparison, but the direction – markup roughly tripling – is striking.

Bordeaux: Latour and d’Yquem

Château Latour appears on both lists. Andrew Fairlie carries the 2003 at £2,500 (£850 in retail, Hedonism Wines); the 1960s list carries the same first-growth Pauillac at 62 shillings and sixpence (£3.13, or £78 today), though without a stated vintage. Castle & Co’s retail list from the same period shows Latour 1952 at 32 shillings (£1.60) – £40 today – implying a 1960s restaurant markup of around 95%, compared to almost 195% today.

Château d’Yquem shows a similar pattern. Andrew Fairlie lists a half bottle of the 2003 at £560 (which retails for around £150, a mark-up of 273%); the 1960s list has an entry at 60 shillings (£3, or £75 today) without a stated vintage or size, which I’ve taken to be a standard 75cl bottle. Castle & Co’s retail range for d’Yquem in the same period was 31–36 shillings (£1.55–£1.80), or £38.75–£45 today, implying a 1960s markup of roughly 67-94%.

Rosé’s fall from prominence

One of the more surprising findings is how rosé’s status has changed. On Andrew Fairlie’s current list, rosé has no section of its own – it sits within ‘regional France’, where a Rosé Cru Classé from Rimauresq, Côtes de Provence 2023, is £75 a bottle (and around £20 in retail). On the 1960s list, the sole Provençal entry, Château Sainte Roseline, was 35 shillings (£1.75, or £43.75 today) – nearly matching Château Léoville Poyferré 1954 at 34 shillings on the same list, and pricier than a Meursault Charmes at 28 shillings (£1.40, or £35 today). In the 1960s, in other words, in a fine dining environment, rosé wasn’t a lesser category at all.

Spirits

A final, striking difference is in spirits. Despite being a Scottish hotel, the 1960s list carries more Cognac than Scotch. Today, the whisky list runs to more than 400 bottles, with Cognac a minor presence by comparison.

Beyond that, it should be noted that the list is almost entirely French, aside from the aforementioned emphasis on German whites. There is one Italian red (Chianti), nothing from Spain – aside from Sherry – and not a single reference for wine outside Europe.

What this tells us

Set side by side, the numbers suggest the story isn’t simply that fine wine has got more expensive in restaurants – it’s that markup behaves differently depending on how easily a diner can price-check a bottle elsewhere. Krug, the most recognisable name on this list, has seen its restaurant markup fall by comparison with the 1960s, even as its absolute price has soared – perhaps because a trophy Champagne brand is now heavily benchmarked by consumers against supermarket and merchant pricing, which limits how much a restaurant can add on percentage terms, or, in this specific case, because of Gleneagles role as a promoter of Krug, with a wide range of bottles at relatively accessible prices. Pol Roger and the German Riesling, by contrast, both show markup expanding sharply over the same period – categories with less retail price transparency appear to give restaurants more room to move.

The more striking shift, though, may be categorical rather than financial. German wine has gone from the single largest section of Gleneagles’ white wine list to almost no presence at all; Cognac outnumbering Scotch in a Scottish hotel has completely inverted, with whisky now dominant; and rosé, once priced above a premier cru Meursault, no longer merits a section of its own. Sixty years on, fine wine costs more, but, notably, the regions and styles driving restaurant wine lists, and the pricing logic applied to them, have changed significantly.

Restaurant pricing, 1965 vs 2026 – Gleneagles Hotel

Wine	1965 restaurant price	2026-equivalent (×25)	1965 retail price (adj.)	1965 restaurant markup	2026 restaurant price	2026 retail price	2026 markup
Krug Private Cuvée Extra Sec 1961¹	63s (£3.15)	£78.75	£31.25–£43.75	80–150%	£325	£240	35%
Pol Roger Extra Cuvée Réserve 1961²	58s (£2.90)	£72.50	£41.25	76%	£295	£120	146%
Rauenthaler Burggraben Spätlese 1963³	40s (£2.00)	£50.00	£34.38	45%	£112	£50	124%
Château Latour (vintage n/s)⁴	62s 6d (£3.13)	£78.13	£40.00	95%	£2,500	£850	195%
Château d’Yquem (vintage n/s)⁵	60s (£3.00)	£75.00	£38.75–£45.00	67–94%	£560*	£150	273%
Meursault Charmes⁶	28s (£1.40)	£35.00	£21.88	60%	£1,150	£400	188%
Château Léoville Poyferré, 2ème Cru⁷	34s (£1.70)	£42.50	£17.50	143%	£650	£190	242%
Richebourg Grand Cru⁸	62s 6d (£3.13)	£78.13	£19.38	303%	£2,350	£1,000	135%
Rosé (Ste Roseline vs Rimauresq)⁹	35s (£1.75)	£43.75	n/a	n/a	£75	£20	275%
Manzanilla, per glass¹⁰	3s 6d (£0.175)	£4.38	£17.50 (bottle)	150%*	£7.00	£21.00 (bottle)	233%*

¹ Historic bottling discontinued; today’s nearest equivalent is Krug Grande Cuvée, 172ème Édition — not a direct match.

² 1965 figure is for a 75cl bottle; the 2026 restaurant price is for a magnum (Andrew Fairlie does not list Pol Roger by the 75cl). Not size-matched.

³ Different producer and sub-region: the 1965 wine is a Rheingau Spätlese; the 2026 comparator is a Nahe Spätlese from Dönnhoff. Illustrative of the category, not a like-for-like.

⁴ Neither the 1965 Gleneagles list nor the Castle & Co retail reference states a vintage; the 2026 figure is specifically the 2003. 2026 retail figure (~£850) is an approximate current market price for that wine.

⁵ The 2026 restaurant price (marked *) is for a half bottle; the 1965 price is assumed to be a full bottle, as the list does not specify otherwise. 2026 retail figure (~£150) is an approximate current market price for that wine (from 2003 vintage)

⁶ 1965 retail comparator is a stated 1955 vintage; the 1965 restaurant listing itself states no vintage. 2026 restaurant wine is Domaine des Comtes Lafon 2015 — different producer from any 1960s reference; 2026 retail figure (~£400) is an approximate current market price for that wine.

⁷ 1965 price is for a full bottle (a half bottle was also listed, at 18s / £0.90, or £22.50 adjusted — not quite half the full-bottle price, typical of era’s handling charges on halves). No 1965 retail price for Poyferré itself was found; the retail figure shown is for Château Léoville Las Cases 1955, a different second-growth Saint-Julien château, so the 143% markup is a proxy only. 2026 restaurant wine is the 2000 vintage; 2026 retail figure (~£190) is an approximate current market price for that wine.

⁸ No 1965 retail price for Richebourg itself was found; the retail figure shown is for a generic village Vosne-Romanée 1955 — the correct village, but a step down in classification from grand cru, so the 303% markup materially overstates the true 1965 mark-up on Richebourg itself and should be read as an upper bound, not a like-for-like. Note this wine shared an identical 1965 restaurant price with Château Latour (see above): by 2026 Latour (£2,500) has pulled ahead of Richebourg (£2,350) from that identical starting point, suggesting somewhat greater price appreciation for the first-growth Bordeaux. 2026 restaurant wine is Thibault Liger-Belair 2013; 2026 retail figure (~£1,000) is an approximate current market price for that wine.

⁹ Positional comparison only — different producers, regions and vintages; included to show rosé’s price ranking relative to other categories, not a direct price comparison.

¹⁰ Priced by the glass (75ml) in the restaurant, but by the bottle at retail — not directly comparable without assuming a glass yield per 750ml bottle. Markups marked * assume ten 75ml glasses per bottle (i.e. restaurant glass price × 10, compared with the bottle retail price); treat as an estimate rather than a precise figure.