An appointment with Dr Wine

It looks like a hospital drama. A dozen anxious faces gather around the victim, staring intently at what the physician is up to. No one speaks. She inserts not one, but two elephantine corkscrews simultaneously.

Out comes the cork, with a sigh; in goes a shot of nitrogen from a giant gas canister. There is close inspection; there is sniffing. Finally, blood-like, a little wine is poured. The verdict is awaited: still alive? Or are we too late? Is it all over? Has the end come?

I was standing by the side of Whitstable wine enthusiast Keith Powis when Toni Paterson operated on his bottle of '75 Penfolds Grange. Powis had lived in Australia for six years in the late Seventies and had bought the bottle (for about £7) just before he left. It had been stored first in an insulated zone in his garage, then in a spiral cellar he had built underneath it.

If Toni declared the bottle alive and well, it would be topped up with a little 1996 Grange, recorked, and given a "bill of health" sticker which would mean a top auction price should Keith ever sell the wine (worth between £100 and £150 a bottle nowadays). If Toni declared it dead, it would become valueless and Keith would simply have to scurry home and drink it as soon as possible.

Toni milked the moment, then smiled. "It's absolutely fine," she said, passing the glass to Keith, "though you've brought it in just at the right time." The old cork had been leaking very slightly. With the top-up and a new cork, it would stride through a few more years.

This was the first British Penfolds Wine Clinic, held (appropriately, since it's an ex-hospital) in The Lanesborough Hotel last week. The company regularly holds these mobile casualty units, to which enthusiasts can bring their prized old bottles, in Australia.

It has inspected, Toni tells me, around 30,000 bottles over the past 10 years. Chief winemaker John Duval says: " I spend a lot of time trying to convince people to drink their wine. They all say they're keeping it for a special occasion, but somehow no occasion ever seems special enough."

Chef John Torode, of Smith's, brought along his bottle of '83 Grange and Toni needed only a quick look to tell him it did not need to be opened: the height of the wine inside the bottle's neck was fine. Jono Coleman was another happy expatriate collector.

A third person, by contrast, faced a dilemma. He didn't wish to be named, but was happy to describe himself as a Mad Vertical Collector. (Vertical in this case means that he tries to collect as many bottles as he can of every single vintage of a wine.) The MVC has, somewhere in Sussex, a huge collection; indeed one bottle he brought to the clinic (a '62 Bin 467) was so rare that neither John Duval nor Toni Paterson had seen one. The dilemma, however, arose over his bottle of '54 Grange.

The first commercial vintage of Grange was 1952, and any bottle from the Fifties is a great rarity. Toni took one look and shuddered. The level was low. Unopened, the wine is worth around £6,000. If she opened it and declared it clinically dead, it would be worthless. The MVC can't be as mad as he claims: the '54 went back to Sussex intact. Not that he was afraid of bad news: one of his other wines, a '72 Grange, was opened and declared beyond defibrillation. Gutted? "Not really. I've got another one."