In the boom times it embodied economic exuberance and excess: bankers thought nothing of running up a £44,000 wine bill in a London restaurant.

But fine wine has become the latest casualty of the crunch, with Berry Bros & Rudd, Britain's oldest wine merchant and discreet purveyor to a host of well-connected clients, selling wines at up to 40 per cent below cost.

The victims include Château Lafite Rothschild 2005. Last summer it fetched £11,000 a case but has been sold recently for as little as £6,000 a case. Château La-Tour 2005, which at its peak was selling at £12,000 a case, has since been sold by Berry Bros for as little as £7,000.

Simon Staples, sales and marketing director at the business, said: “We have sadly had to sell around 15 to 20 wines at less than cost to encourage our customers to buy investment-grade wine at credit-crunch attractive prices.”

The group said that the problem stems in part from the downturn in the Russian market, which traditionally accounts for about 7 per cent of sales.The country's army of 100 oligarch billionaires has halved, according to the Russian business magazine Finans.

Key European customers, the group said, had also simply panicked as the downturn kicked in last year. Berry Bros is not expecting to see its usual uplift in sales from the end of next month, which is normally fuelled by bankers' bonuses.

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