Bottles on the Block

A trio of wine auctions in New York next weekend will bring down the curtain on a season during which prices for trophy wines soared into a dizzying new realm. Last month, for example, a single lot of wine surpassed the million dollar mark for the first time when a 50 case lot of Chateau Mouton-Rothschild 1982 sold at Aulden Cellars-Sotheby’s in New York for $1,051,600. Trophy wine is now priced like art rather than beverage.Is there any hope for the wine collector of modest means to be the winning bidder in the auction room? Urban Vintage asked this question, and others, of Richard Brierley, head of Christie’s North American wine department, over a twohour lunch last week at Oceana. Mr. Brierley, a Brit who studied politics at the University of Bordeaux and in England, started his wine career guiding tours at the champagne house Moet & Chandon. After stints in “brick and mortar” stores and online retailing, as well as at Sotheby’s, he took over as top wine man at Christie’s in summer 2001 at age 28. Christie’s kicks off this weekend auction action on Friday evening with its 2,037-lot sale at Rockefeller Center, continuing on Saturday. Acker Merrall & Condit and Aulden Cellars–Sotheby’s also hold Saturday sales.In the sales room, Mr. Brierley has a reputation for injecting wit into sales that can otherwise drone on. For our seafood-themed lunch, he selected a pair of contrasting white wines, one a young and very dry Chateau Lynch-Bages Blanc 2004, the other a rich, rose-scented Domaine Weinbach Gewurtztraminer 2000, “Cuvée Laurence.””We have only one bottle of that left,” the sommelier said.”Good, we’ll take two,” Mr. Brierley said.Q: Have this year’s leaping auction prices shut all but wealthy collectors out of the market?A: Unfortunately, it’s the lots at $200,000 or more that get the headlines. But the average price of a lot is still around $2,000 and plenty of things sell for below $1,000. What’s happened is that the huge prices of 2005 Bordeaux futures immediately affected the rest of the market. Everything was pushed up. But what happens is that the best get more expensive while the good ones don’t move. So, while the sound bite is that a case of Mouton Rotshchild 1945 sold for $345,000, the reality is that the prices of hundreds of lots haven’t jumped enormously. They are still a very large part of what we sell.Q: From the catalog for your sale this Saturday, what are some specific lots priced well below $1,000 that catch your attention?A: Here’s lot 1009, six bottles of Pommard “Pezerolles” 1997, a red burgundy from Hubert de Montille. Love the producer. It’s estimated at just $250–$400. Let’s look at Chablis, which I keep telling people is underpriced. Lot 1013 is six bottles of Chablis “Montée de Tonnerre” 2002 from Raveneau. This is a great producer and a wonderful Chablis vintage with perfect acidity. It’s estimated at $450–$550. And here’s lot 1165, Chambertin 1996, a burgundy grand cru from Laurent, six bottles at $600–$800. That’s clinically insane.Q: New York abounds in excellent wine shops. Why buy at auction?A: You can buy wines with age, and that’s the key. If you walk into most wine shops, you’ll be buying a recent if not the most recent vintage of a wine because that’s what the distributor has available. At auction, you can buy wines aged five, 20, or 30 years from somebody like yourself who bought them privately at release, has stored them well, but now has a myriad of reasons for not wanting to drink them. Besides maturity, the auction price including our fees [17.5% a lot under $200,000, plus sales tax] will be below the retail shop price, should you be able to find the wine.Q: Unless provenance is stated in the catalog, how does one know that a lot of wine being offered has been properly stored?A: We make every effort to examine each wine collection in situ, because once it arrives in the clinical conditions of a warehouse, it’s very difficult to make a judgment. We want to see the wine in context: who owned it, where it’s been, what other wines are stored around it. Next Monday, I’ll drive up to Westchester County to inspect just two cases of wine: Krug champagne, vintage 1943 in the original wood cases. They had belonged to a man who died two years ago. If they’re good, it’s something special that could be worth $12,000. If they’re bad, we leave them where they are.Q: Does boredom set in at a wine auction? At art auctions, at least, the works are displayed.A: I am an auctioneer for a whole host of things at Christie’s, so I try to bring a little of that drama and interplay between the auctioneer and the room into a wine auction. The commercial necessity is that you have to sell quite a lot of wine to make $1 million, and you don’t want to keep the audience captive too long. You have to keep the pace up, yet you don’t want to call out the numbers like a robot. Sometimes, you have to wake up the room a bit, because they’re all waiting for something that’s 25 lots away. So I’ll open a $700 lot at $300. Or I’ll say, “Who’ll give me $100?” Suddenly, everyone starts bidding, because it’s cheap.Q: Can you buy wine for yourself at auction?A: I’m forbidden to buy for myself at Christie’s auctions because I know what the reserve is on a lot and the public isn’t privy to that. Nor do I buy from other auctioneers, but I will buy from the wine trade in London.Q: Do you have any particular personal pleasures at the table?A: I love young burgundies with cheese. If I were told that I was lactose intolerant, I don’t think I could stand it.Q: You have a presale tasting from the upcoming auction on Friday at 6 p.m. (reservations at 212-636-2097). Can anyone attend?A: We charge $75 only to have some level of gravitas for the people who come. You can taste such rare things as Vega Sicilia 1968 from Spain and Montrachet 1970 from Leroy. Being able to taste the wines is equivalent to standing in front of the picture and deciding if you like it.Wine Mysteries ExplainedWhat gives wine its “mouthfeel?”Why do the tannins of pinot noir have a silky texture while those in cabernet sauvignon often feel harsher? These and other questions about the mysteries of wine will be addressed next Monday in a lecture by a chemist in the food science & technology department at Oregon State University, James Kennedy. “I’ve been doing this research for 15 years and it can still be as mysterious as ever,” Mr. Kennedy says. The lecture takes place at the New York Academy of Science’s new offices. Monday, December 11, 6 p.m., 7 World Trade Center, 250 Greenwich St., 718-204-4854, $25.

Bottles on the Block

Bottles on the Block

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