As location is to real estate, so provenance is to trophy wine at auctions: It is the decisive factor in determining how high the prices will go. The provenance of the 216 lots to be sold this evening at Sotheby’s is about as good as it gets. Each and every bottle comes directly from Baroness Philippine de Rothschild’s private cellar at Chateau Mouton Rothschild, the family estate in Bordeaux that was brought to glory by her late father, Baron Philippe de Rothschild. With the auction market for the finest wines rising steeply, tonight’s bidding could drive prices to record highs.

“The essential word, if you do care about provenance, is traceability,” the London-based head of Sotheby’s wine department, Serena Sutcliffe, said at a luncheon hosted by Baroness de Rothschild last Friday. Unlike paintings or sculpture, whose condition can be observed prior to sale, the quality of an old wine is unknowable until the bottle is opened. Even bottles that have recently rested in ideal conditions (a constant 55 degrees and good humidity) may once have been mistreated. If that has happened, the wine will not recover. Remarkably, the Moutons being sold tonight, going back to the 1887 vintage, have never left the chateau until being shipped last month to a temperature-controlled warehouse in New Jersey. That’s the ultimate in traceability.

The single most exciting moment at tonight’s auction could come with the bidding for an ultrarare jeroboam (equal to 6 regular bottles) of Mouton Rothschild 1945. No wine is more ardently sought after than this one, a product of an exceptionally ripe, intense, and long-lived vintage. Last September, a case of six magnums (double-size bottles) of Mouton 1945 sold for a stellar $345,000 at a Los Angeles auction, leaving far behind the previous record price of $100,300 set in October 1995, according to the Wine Spectator Auction Index. Those wines did not come directly from the chateau. Baroness de Rothschild’s jeroboam could easily surpass its estimated sale price of between $80,000 and $150,000.

It was with that 1945 vintage that Baron de Rothschild decided to commission artwork for the label of every vintage of his wine, decades after having done a “one-off” design for the 1922 vintage, the first to be entirely chateau-bottled. The 1945 label carries a straightforward design of grape leaves flanking a Churchillian “V for victory” and the words “Année de la Victoire.” The baron had rejected an earlier design that showed the Arc de Triomphe, because he felt it did not pay homage to the Allies.

Tonight’s auction coincides with an exhibition on Sotheby’s third floor (through March 10) of the original label art for 60 vintages of Mouton. The choice of artists is nothing if not eclectic, ranging from Picasso (1973) to Saul Steinberg (1983) to Francis Bacon (1990). Balthus’s drawing of a nude girl for the 1993 label was banned by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, resulting in a label without art on bottles destined for America.

Last Friday, Baroness Philippine unveiled the latest label, a landscape by the Prince of Wales with his added handwritten note “To celebrate the 100th Anniversary of the Entente Cordiale” between Britain and France.

Though tonight’s sale is overwhelmingly Mouton, it also includes classic vintages of the other Bordeaux greats: Lafite, Latour, Haut Brion, Margaux, Cheval Blanc, Petrus, and Yquem. “These owners do swaps of their wine, and their wines have also rested in Mouton’s cellar since they were delivered,” Ms. Sutcliffe said. The oldest bottle on sale tonight, a Chateau Margaux 1868 of “excellent color and clarity,” is estimated to sell for between $3,000 and $5,000.

As for that giant bottle of Mouton 1945 to be sold, Ms. Stucliffe calls the wine “just a totally complete claret, perhaps the greatest ever.” As for the ebullient baroness, who will watch the sale of her cellar gems tonight, 1945 was a year of personal tragedy. In June of the previous year, her mother, born Elisabeth Pelletier de Chambure, had been arrested by the Gestapo in Paris, even though, unlike her husband, she was not Jewish. The 10-year-old Philippine was placed into hiding while her father served the Free French Forces in England. On March 23, 1945, Philippine’s mother was murdered by the Nazis at the Ravensbruck concentration camp — even as the sap of a legendary vintage was stirring in the vines of Mouton.