News

Reprinted from The New York Times

March 23, 2005

To a Wine Auction, Thirsty for Bargains

By Sam Perkins

As she made her shopping rounds with two friends one recent Saturday, Chevyn McClintock, a Manhattan antiques dealer, stopped at Sotheby’s on York Avenue to buy wine. They walked right past Aulden Cellars, the wine boutique on the round floor, and headed to the second floor, where an auction of bottles from Chateau Haut-Brion, the great Bordeaux property, was taking place. "We’re looking for something special," Ms. McClintock said.

Shopping bags in tow, the women took seats at tables and waited for the lots they were interested in to come up. Knowledgeable and patient, they awaited their prize. Three hours later they walked out with a number of lots, all reds, that at $100 or so a bottle were not cheap but could not have been found in most stores.

In 10 years wine auctions in New York have grown from a sideline for hard-core collectors to a mainstream activity for wine lovers. Along the way they have a attracted a crowd younger and newer to wine than anyone could have imagined when Morrell, the Manhattan wine store, held the first commercial wine auction in the city in 1994.

Although other states had allowed wine auctions, it was not until 1993 that New York let retailers hold auctions, and then only if they had held wine licenses at least 10 years. Auction houses then teamed with retailers to offer their own auctions.

Since then buyers have become accustomed to the procedures. Registration is usually as simple as presenting photo identification and a credit card. Until bidding begins, there is nothing to pay but the price of the catalog, about $20.

Around the country sales at auctions represent only a small part of the wine market, which was some $22 billion last year, according to the Wine Institute, an industry group in California. But with sales estimated at more than $80 million last year, auctions are one of the fastest-growing sales channels.

The attraction of auctions to neophytes and pros alike is that they can yield bargains for those who find out which growers did especially well in particular years and search out odd lots. "If you invest the time and do some research, you’ll find good buys," said Nikos Antonakeas, managing director of the Morrell Group.

For example, in recent auctions in the city, discerning buyers may have noticed reasonably priced Burgundies on the block among some first-growth Cote de Nuits and Cote de Beaune from excellent growers in less than stellar vintages. A mixed lot of six magnums of Nuits-St.-Georges Les Vaucrains 1999 and 2000 from the Burgundy grower Henri Gouges went for $470, including commission, the equivalent of less than $40 for a regular-size bottles that would sell for $60 or more retail.

The pickings are good among imported wines because they were bought from their producers when the dollars was strong, and its drop is barely felt when the bottles are sold. One importer of French wine, surveying the low prices at Sotheby’s, said, "I can’t get these wines at these prices in Bordeaux."

While Ms. McClintock was bidding on Bordeaux at Sotheby’s, a few blocks away an auction organized by Zachys, a retailer in Westchester county, was in full swing in the pillared red-velvet dining room of the restaurant Daniel. Here the atmosphere was much less sedate.

Rob Rosania, 34, a real estate investor, was at a table with other men in their 30’s, young collectors and with buyers for Manhattan restaurants. Among them were Robert Bohr of Cru and buyers for the wine-centered restaurant Veritas. The group sat together, so its members wouldn’t bid against one another. "We decide ahead of time which lots we want to go after individually," Mr. Rosania said. "But we also stay flexible. If the bidding for a particularly good wine is soft, we’ll jump in, buy it together and split the case."

The retailer Acker Merrall & Condit, which holds auctions in New York and Los Angeles as well as online, and Edward Roberts International of Illinois are adding sales this year. WineBid.com, the leading online wine auctioneer, with $16 million in sales last year, now has weekly auctions “to meet the increased demand for fine wine,” said Jerry Zech, its chief executive.

Ursula Hermacinski, an auctioneer for Zachys, said bidders at wine auctions used to be "old guys at the University Club buying clarets to lay down for a decade."

"With the 90’s," she said, "we got the younger drinkers who wanted to buy old wines to drink right away and to speculate in." They speculate "to build up enough of a cellar to sell off to finance more wine buying."

Online wine auctions have also expanded. The lots are usually small – one to three bottles – to be within reach of the first-time buyers. The commissions are also usually lower.

Auction houses go the extra mile to make buyers feel welcome. Starting this week Acker Merrall & Condit will hold its sales at Cru in Greenwich Village. Registered bidders get a free tasting of wines and can have a lunch of three courses ($65) of five ($85), with a free bottle of wine.

Halfway through the daylong sales at Sotheby’s, white-jacketed staff members wheeled in a free buffet for bidders. At the Zachys auction at Daniel there was a buffet for $50.

There are risks of course. It is easy to be caught up in the thrill of the bidding and forget your budget and the fact that the hammer prices do not include the commission and sales tax, which can add 20 percent.

The condition of the wine is harder to judge. All houses inspect the bottles and describe their condition in their catalogs. Although bottles are sampled, duds do get through. If you get a corked or an oxidized bottle there is usually little recourse.

Yet the thrill of the hunt keeps auction buyers in the game. Near the end of a recent Acker Merrall sale Franck Desalvo, a Long Island retiree in a T-shirt that read "Life’s Too Short to Drink Cheap Wine," had one more trophy in sight, a case of the Australian cult wine Penfolds Grange 1997 vintage, which retails for $250 or more a bottle. When the hammer came down, Mr. Desalvo had snagged it for $125 a bottle. "What a steal!" he shouted.