Queen of the Auctioneers

On the expansive lawn of the Meadowwood Country Club five years ago, under a pristine white tent large enough to hold several hundred people, auctioneer Ursula Hermacinski made her Napa Valley Wine Auction debut.

It was past the event’s midpoint and regular Christie’s auctioneer Duncan McEwan was tiring from the heat. He needed a break.

“He turned to me and he said, ‘Do you want to do any of this?’ ” remembers Hermacinski, who was helping to spot bids at the auction. “I thought I’d do 10 or 20 lots.”

First, she quickly gauged the tenor of the crowd. “It was toward the end of the day,” she says, “the alcohol level in the tent was rising, and a lot of people had left to get tables for dinner.”

The remaining crowd was restless and wanted a show. Though Hermacinski’s first couple of lots were auctioned in a straightforward manner, she soon began to chide the underbidders, praise the winners of bids, quip about some of the prizes, encourage those who donated lots to increase their offerings.

“You’re not going to let her get away with that, are you?” she shouted to one bidder, pointing to another bidder half a room away. The auction room burst into laughter. Then the auctioneer turned back to the current high bidder and said, “He’s thinking: ‘Get ready to retaliate.’ ”

The crowd shouted and hooted. Some of the remaining lots were generating fierce competition; lots that should have gone for $800 were fetching three and four times that amount.

“As an auctioneer, the only proof of your success is one more bid, and that crowd that day wanted to bid,” she recalls. In fact, many of those who had already taken seats at tables outside the tent for dinner heard the commotion inside the tent and returned for one of the most raucous finales to a wine auction ever. Instantly, people were saying, “Who is she and where did she come from?”

This was hardly the atmosphere the Napa crowd had grown accustomed to. In the first years of the Napa Valley Wine Auction, which began in 1981, the auctioneer was Christie’s aristocratic and authoritative J. Michael Broadbent. Broadbent wore a dark suit and plain tie that remained fixed in place even as the heat in the tent rose above 100 degrees. He’d reluctantly removed his jacket after about five hours.

Though a bit of fun eventually wormed its way into the Napa auction over the years as other Christie’s auctioneers replaced Broadbent, little of the calm changed at Napa for its first 11 years.

Since Hermacinski’s Napa appearance, she has been the hottest ticket on the charity wine auction circuit. In 1996 she did 35 auctions, many of them for charities, and spent about 85% of her time on the road. When she is asked to do an auction, her only consideration is who’s doing the asking: “Is it someone Christie’s would want us to be involved with? And is it a place I want to go?”

How did she come to pick up a gavel?

“I was a really nerdy kid,” she says. “When I was young, I didn’t do what the other girls did. I loved the way museums smelled. I had old lady friends. I loved art history.” She took courses in fine arts at Marquette University in Milwaukee, and eventually became a secretary in the London-based Christie’s rugs and toys department, which she felt was on the fast track to more work in furniture and decoration. “But my true passion and desire is something I’ve never pursued--jewelry,” she says.

After 13 years at Christie’s, Hermacinski--who suffered a broken neck and other serious injuries in a car accident nearly a year ago but has made a slow, steady recovery--now heads the wine department for the company’s West Coast office in Beverly Hills. Saturday, wine lovers can watch Hermacinski in action when she gavels Christie’s first commercial wine auction in the Beverly Hills auction room it opened in May, its first in Southern California.

But don’t expect hoots and hollers at this auction. “In a commercial wine auction,” she says, “things go along rather methodically.” Though, it’s likely she will manage to work in a few quips.

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Christie’s wine auction begins Saturday at 10 a.m.; lots expected to be sold by 6 p.m. 360 N. Camden Drive, Beverly Hills, (310) 385-2600.