Christie’s to Auction Rare Wines at Bel Age

Wine collectors who have long awaited that odd bottle of 1864 Chateau Lafite will have a chance to bid on one today at the Bel Age Hotel during the first commercial wine sale to be conducted on the West Coast by Christie’s, the London auction house.

The bottle, filled four years before the Bordeaux estate was bought by the Rothschild family, was opened, sampled and recorked at the winery last May, according to the auction catalogue, and the cellar master “attested to its fine condition, remarking on its youthful fruit, excellent balance and lack of browning”--a common sign of vinous senility.

According to Christie’s marketing research, such a bottle would be snapped up at $5,000 but could fetch $8,000.

Expected to sell for up to $15,000 is an oversize bottle of 1924 Chateau Mouton-Rothschild--actually eight regular bottles, or six liters of wine, corked into a single behemoth of a bottle that the Bordelais call Imperial . The broad glass front and claret colored background provided a striking and expansive setting for Jacques Carlu, a noted Paris architect and stage designer of the day, to mount his specially commissioned label. Combining a stylized ram’s head ( mouton meaning sheep), a wine barrel and five arrows representing the Rothschild brothers, the label was said to have stunned Bordeaux wine merchants who feared losing marketing control if other vintners sought to distinguish their estate-bottled products--which they surely did.

The auction, to be conducted by Michael Broadbent of Christie’s in London, will offer a range of vintages from another famous Bordeaux estate, Chateau Petrus, including magnums, or double-bottles, from 1945, 1947 and 1961.

A number of older Napa Valley wines are also going on the block, including Beaulieu Vineyards “private reserve” bottlings from 1951, 1958 and 1968. A wide range of wines have been drawn from the cellar of who Christie’s described as “a prominent Los Angeles collector.” These include 11 vintages of both Romanee-Conti in Burgundy and Chateau Petrus, not to mention 19 vintages of Chateau d’Yquem, a straw-colored dessert wine from the Bordeaux village of Sauternes, including what Christie’s called “the legendary” 1921 vintage and a single bottle of the 1811--”probably the most renowned vintage of the 19th Century, indeed arguably of all time”--priced at about $20,000.

In all, the auction will include property drawn from more than 30 private collections, offered in two lots starting at 11 a.m. and at 2:15 p.m. at the Bel Age in West Hollywood.