A WINE AUCTION

It was not your everyday sale because the idea was to spend money, not hunt bargains. Thus one buyer parted with $900 for dinner for two in Paris, transportation not included. And another spent $950 for a case of Champagne that would sell for about $180 in a wine shop.

This freewheeling spending continued for almost seven hours, the amount of time it took to dispose of 214 lots of wine, trips, dinners, hotel accommodations and other lures gathered for the 1986 KCBX Wine Auction Classic and Tasting at Avila Beach. The eagerness to spend reflected not just the desire to acquire choice goods but the charitable intent of the bidders. Their payments will go into the operating fund of KCBX, a nonprofit public radio station that broadcasts to San Luis Obispo and Santa Barbara counties.

The auction was one event in a three-day weekend of wine tastings and dinners that attracted about 1,500 participants. Betsy Camp, development director for KCBX and auction coordinator, estimated the net proceeds at more than $50,000, which is a sizable chunk of the station’s annual budget of $250,000.

Camp herself was an auction donor. Along with Don Reynolds of A Gourmet Touch, a food shop and catering service in San Luis Obispo, she offered to prepare dinner for four and provide the wines. “I’m not a pro, I just love to cook,” Camp said. The dinner was sold for $400.

Larry Shupnick, wine auction classic director and proprietor of the San Luis Bay Inn, where the event took place, also volunteered to cook dinner for four. Co-director Archie McLaren signed up as sommelier for that meal, and Frank R. Lanzone Jr., KCBX president and general manager, promised to wait on the guests. Their offer brought $600.

The $900 tab for the Parisian dinner will cover food only. Andrew Lawlor of Dexter, Mich., who bought it, will have to pay even more if he wants wine. The dinner was contributed by Yan Restaurant le Toit de Passy, and the package includes a trip to the market with proprietor Yan Jacquot. “Hopefully, it will be a memorable experience,” Lawlor said.

Lawlor, president of a computer company in Ann Arbor, Mich., added further to the auction coffers by donating a mixed selection of California wines that brought $400, and a group of late-harvest dessert wines that sold for $550. And his home will have a new piece of furniture--a handsome, handcrafted oak cabinet holding an imperial, double magnum, two magnums and four standard-size bottles of Corbett Canyon Vineyards 1984 Central Coast Cabernet Sauvignon. The price for that was $1,100.

Scott Williams of Spyglass Liquors and Delicatessen in Shell Beach, Calif., bought the oldest bottle and the most attention-getting new wine of the weekend. The old wine was a pre-1860, handmade bottle of Chateau Bel-air, Marquis d’Alegre, Margaux. “It should be fun to share it with somebody,” Williams said. And that would be an expensive treat, for the bottle cost $360.

The new wine was the first case of Maison Deutz produced at Arroyo Grande by the French Champagne house of Deutz. Scheduled for release in California in October, the wine is made according to traditional Champagne methods using French yeast and equipment imported from Champagne. Williams had no trouble parting with $950 for the case. “It’s beautiful, wonderful Champagne. It’s going to go over just great,” he said.

Williams, who said the wine would sell for about $15 a bottle, was congratulated on his purchase by Andre Lallier, proprietor and chef de caves of Champagne Deutz in Ay, France. Lallier, who also oversees the California enterprise, had signed each bottle and enclosed a certificate.

A giver as well as a receiver, Williams donated a vertical collection of Silver Oak Wine Cellars Alexander Valley Cabernet Sauvignon from 1974 through 1979, which was auctioned for $310.

The biggest spender was Thomas Ash of Riverside, who made more than $7,400 in purchases. Ash, who sells grain and feed ingredients, bought dinner for two (again without wine) at Restaurant Michel Rostang in Paris. The purchase includes a day in the kitchen and a trip to the market with chef Rostang. Unlike Lawlor, who must get to France on his own, Ash will receive two round-trip tickets. The price was $2,400.

Ash also bought a handmade box of Eberle Winery’s 1982 Paso Robles Cabernet Sauvignon. This wine was the sweepstakes winner at the San Diego National Wine Competition in May. Ash’s “piano case” holds the only imperial, jeroboam, double magnum and magnum to be bottled from the vintage, as well as one standard bottle, six wine glasses with the Eberle name and a cork puller. His winning bid was $1,000.

Picture-Lined Wooden Box

Ash paid even more for less wine, a mixed case of Far Niente Winery Chardonnay and Cabernet Sauvignon. However, this was no ordinary case, but a picture-lined, brass-fitted wooden box, one of 10 such cases made. Each bottle was autographed by winery proprietor Gil Nickel. Ash paid $1,500 for this acquisition.

Big prices for big bottles of wine included $560 for an imperial (six liters) of 1979 Jordan Alexander Valley Cabernet Sauvignon; $390 for a salmanazar (nine liters, the equivalent of one case of standard bottles) of 1985 Edna Valley Vineyard Estate Bottled Chardonnay; $380 for a jeroboam (4.5 liters) of 1982 Ridge California Monte Bello Cabernet Sauvignon; $360 for a double magnum (three liters) of 1979 Jekel Private Reserve Monterey County Home Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon; $350 for a specially etched, limited edition magnum of 1984 Sequoia Grove Napa Valley Chardonnay, and $340 for a salmanazar of 1985 Santa Ynez Valley Chardonnay from the Firestone Vineyard.

Jekel Cabernet played a role in a romance that developed at last year’s wine auction. Nancy Farrell of Long Beach and Ron Rose of Paso Robles met over a glass of the Cabernet at a Friday night tasting, became engaged in January while sipping Tonio Conti sparkling wine, which is made at Paso Robles, and will be married next year. They plan to make the auction an annual event.

Not all auction items were stratospherically priced. Three bottles of J. Lohr wine cost the buyer $25. A magnum of 1984 Castoro Cellars Paso Robles, Tierra Rajada Vineyard, Chardonnay in a handmade wooden box cost $60. And a wooden box holding four wines from Roudon-Smith Vineyards sold for $70. There was at least one bargain. A $300 after-hours Champagne shopping spree at Norri-Anne’s, a boutique in Pismo Beach, went at the discount price of $270.

Certain purchases will demand patience and/or work on the part of the buyer. For $270, the wine lover who acquired three double magnums of 1983 Austin Cellars Santa Barbara County Pinot Noir received only a certificate. The wine has not yet been bottled. And the buyer of six bottles of 1982 Tonio Conti Blanc de Blancs Sparkling Wine acquired wine-making chores. Only one of the bottles has been disgorged, labeled and corked. The winery provided instructions for riddling and disgorging the remainder.

Helpful in that project would be the only piece of wine-making equipment auctioned. This was an oak riddling rack from the cellars of Veuve Cliquot-Ponsardin in Champagne, France. At $200, the riddling rack outsold the Tonio Conti wine, which brought $140.

Not every wine sold was produced by a commercial winery. Larry Roberts of Shell Beach offered three bottles of his homemade Pinot Noir, each from a different vineyard. The minimum bid for the lot was set at a modest $30, but the wine sold for $90, which must have made Roberts proud.

Since wine is associated with the good life, the 200 who registered for the auction did not find themselves in austere surroundings. Instead, they ate, drank, relaxed and chatted at what seemed like a lawn party. Tables were arranged on the grass near the San Luis Bay Inn golf course, sheltered by soaring yellow canopies and cooled by breezes from the bay.

Breakfast Buffet

Late risers strolled along a breakfast buffet that held such morning treats as fresh raspberries, blueberries and grapes, chocolate-coated croissants, hot blueberry muffins, fluffy biscuits, poppy-seed rolls and fruit-flavored yogurt. There were the usual juices. But there was also Pinot Noir grape juice, squeezed the day before at the Firestone Vineyard. Orchids decorated the buffet, and the table centerpieces were red cabbages fringed into flowers that sprouted leaves of red anthurium and sprays of Golden Shower orchids.

After three hours of buying, the auction-goers were given a lunch break. Picnic baskets plunked in the center of each table contained pate, cold roast game hen, smoky olives from Arroyo Grande, goat cheese from Atascadero, French Camembert, chewy loaves of bread, fruit and chocolate chip cookies. Bottles of wine were placed randomly on the tables and passed back and forth in an informal wine tasting.

Then auctioneer J. Brian Cole of Christie, Manson and Woods International resumed work, selling the final lot, a mixed group of Central Coast wines, for $260 at about 4 p.m. That barely gave the buyers a chance to rest and change for the evening’s festivities, a Champagne tasting and $75-a-plate vintage dinner prepared by a battery of chefs from Los Angeles.