The three D’s: buying wine at auction, by SommDom
Old bottles of wine can carry a message from the past. I’m not talking about desperate sailors trying to reconnect with civilisation, but about collectors whose cellars commemorate moments in their lives: anniversaries, triumphs and hopes for the future.
An emotional investment
There are many reasons to collect wine. Traditionally, if you bought two cases and sold one after it had matured, you could effectively drink the other for free. Since the mid-1990s, wine has also become an investment. After decades of rising prices, however, the bubble burst as interest rates rose, inflation returned and Chinese demand fell.
The best reason, in my book, is to allow a wine to mature into something more complex, sublime and harmonious. When you finally drink it years later, it should recall the moment of its creation – an anniversary, a birth year or some other significant event. The bottle becomes a time capsule. Eventually it reconnects with the light of day and breathes for the first time in decades: a hope for the future finally fulfilled.
The three Ds
For some, the right moment never comes. It is quite common for men (and it is generally men) to painstakingly assemble bottled-up memories but never get to open them. Known in the trade as the three Ds – death, divorce and doctor’s orders – these account for most collections coming to auction. For those of us who lack the cellar space, patience or a time machine, they provide the chance to acquire cherished bottles already well on their journey to maturity. The lots are often biographies in liquid form: significant dates, places visited and people met by their owners.
A Master of Wine friend, formerly with Christie’s and now a consultant to several auction houses, laments: ‘I often shed tears to see the most valuable wines left by an owner for a special occasion which never came to pass in their lifetime.’ His advice is simple: ‘Get on and drink your best wines once they are ready.’ Though one client recently sold wines for a widow who could scarcely believe the value of some of the lots. Her late husband had never admitted spending more than £10 a bottle. She was therefore delighted when an untouched case of Château Haut-Brion 1982 raised enough to pay for a new kitchen.
Wine auctions in Sussex
Sussex boasts two auction houses with specialist wine departments. Will Rowsell recently took charge of this side of the business at Toovey’s Auctioneers, near Storrington. Among the rugs and brown furniture of a recent country-house probate sale sat a haul of 1970s Château Mouton Rothschild. None of the period furniture, paintings or silver had appreciated in value. The wine had.
Established in 1929 by Roland Gorringe, Gorringe’s of Lewes is approaching its centenary. Roland’s great grandson Ollie Searle became Executive Director last year and, as well as expanding the firm’s offering of fine art, furniture and jewellery, recruited my friend and fellow wine writer Lisse Garnett as Head of Fine Wine and Spirits.
Lisse considers that: “There is a sense of nostalgia about all auctions, especially wine auctions. They evoke summers past, old wounds and vanished winemakers. Reviewing lots and catalogues is a reminder of mortality. Bottles once worth thousands can sell for a song, creating opportunities for others. Wine is especially poignant because each cellar is someone’s autobiography, marked by dates, hope and celebration.”
Talking about a sale in May this year of the late Lewesian Brian Cramp’s cellar, Lisse enthused: “looking at these collections is exciting. It is not just about wines of status but encounters long gone. It’s like time travel through the glass, inducing an emotional reminder of the personal history of collector and/or winemaker of the past. Besides the haul of fine Bordeaux and Burgundies [Cramp’s] collection included some historic bottles of Breaky Bottom ‘Dry White Table Wine’ from 1990.”
Brian was a friend and drinking companion of Breaky Bottom’s founder, the late Peter Hall, and a member of a Lewes wine club that included many characters from my parents’ generation. These particular English wines are simply unavailable anywhere else in the world – unless, of course, you are prepared to buy the Breaky Bottom estate, which at the time of writing is on the market with Knight Frank for £4 million.
A sale of two cellars
I asked what was coming up in the autumn and, while confidentiality restricts what Lisse can disclose, she pointed me towards two clients willing to talk about the wines they are consigning to the September 7 sale. Unusually, neither collection comes from probate. Both owners have decided to sell wines they can no longer consume or take with them, though for very different reasons.
A couple now living in Bolney are selling around 100 cases of premium wines collected during 37 years in France. Bordeaux, Burgundy, the Rhône and the Loire are all well represented. They are keeping a handful of favourite Burgundies and the last bottles from one château in the Medoc that no longer exists in its own right. La Fleur Milon was a small independent estate squished between the two most famous Pauillacs: Chateâu Lafite and Mouton Rothschild. Due to a quirk in the 1855 classification rules, if estates acquire more vineyards within the same commune, the additional land takes on the same ranking of the new owner. So when La Fleur Milon was sold in 2006, its land was upgraded and reclassified as part of the premier Claret: Chateâu Lafite.
Cliff Roberson, founder of Roberson Wines, has spent 70 years in the wine trade. After selling a string of wine shops he started buying ‘big names’ from ‘top vintages’ with an eye to profit taking: “As far as I am concerned, you can add ‘dosh’ to the ‘3 Ds’. I bought all Bordeaux first growths, not for the love of them but because I’ve been in the fine wine business all my life. Some have gone up ridiculously, but others have not made anything after paying storage costs. I’m selling now because I am 85 and don’t need them. I’ll keep some back for my daughter who works in wine, but personally I’d sooner have wine costing £10-15 per bottle.”
I attended Chiswick auction rooms recently as they were selling a major collection of wine belonging to the heir of a famous British food brand, which I cannot name for legal reasons. I bought an assorted case from the Jura in France, whose classic ‘vin jeune’ is aged in barrel for six years without being topped and exposed to oxygen, like fino sherry. Unfortunately, they were rather too oxidised even for this style of wine.
Caveat emptor
Buying at auction always carries risks. The Consumer Rights Act 2015 offers no protection against faulty wines, making inspection essential. Check fill levels, corks and capsules for signs of poor storage, and investigate provenance as thoroughly as possible. That matters not only for condition but also because fine wine has long attracted fraudsters. Among the most notorious cases were Hardy Rodenstock’s supposed 1784 and 1787 Château Lafites, sold to Bill Koch for around half a million dollars and later exposed as fakes, their ‘Thomas Jefferson’ initials etched with an electric dental drill.
Reputable auctioneers routinely carry out due diligence on both seller and wine. Although vendors usually remain anonymous, provenance can add considerable value. Later this year the Government of Georgia is due to auction Joseph Stalin’s cellar, including 19th-century bottles inherited from the Tsars. Fame, however uncomfortable, has its price.
My best friend benefitted throughout his entire adulthood from the last of the ‘Ds’: as a young man his father was tipped off about a particularly good vintage of Sandeman’s port, and decided to buy half a pipe (360 bottles). After shipping to his cellar in Sussex his health was such that he was forced to quit drinking. Over the years I have seen it a duty of friendship to help his son lighten the burden and I am pleased to say the collection is now down to the last couple of dozen bottles.
Weight-loss injections and healthier lifestyles are also reducing wine consumption, creating yet more opportunities for buyers prepared to cellar – and eventually drink – fine bottles.
Traditionally, the difference between wine and fine wine is that the latter can be sold more than once: it has a secondary market through auctions, brokers and trading platforms. In that respect, wine has much in common with art (which subject one day I hope will be the subject of a dedicated article in ROSA). As Gorringe’s expands its offering of 20th-century art and valuable antiques, the quality – and hammer prices – of wines are likely to rise too.
More wine than ever is coming to auction from people who, for all sorts of reasons, can no longer enjoy it. Each bottle carries a message; auctions let you receive those messages – and send new ones forward. There will be misfires, of course, but the bargains you can pick up at auction acknowledge the hazards of drinking history.