The Day of the $4,000 Wine Bottles

The first Christie’s wine auction in Southern California, conducted Saturday at its new Beverly Hills sale room, attracted a standing-room-only crowd at the 10 a.m. start, and by the end an anonymous buyer--believed to be a prominent movie personality--paid $48,300 for a case of Romanee-Conti from the great 1990 vintage. That’s more than $4,000 per bottle. The estimated value of the case of wine was $35,000.

It was midway through the auction when bidding began on the 12-bottle case of wine from the Domaine de la Romanee-Conti. Bidding grew spirited as the price rose. Solid cases of Romanee-Conti are extremely rare because the domaine normally makes only mixed cases of its various wines.

Sales at Saturday’s auction totaled $2.3 million for 1,216 lots, far exceeding the auction company’s expectations of about $1.5 million.

“It’s clear that the West Coast is a major auction area for wine, on par with New York and other major cities,” said an enthusiastic Christie’s official.

Among the auction lots that sold best were 1982 Bordeaux from Classified Growth properties. First Growth properties Cha^teaux Mouton, Latour and Margaux sold in the $4,500- to $5,000-per-case range, and a number of so-called cult California Cabernet Sauvignons also sold for high prices, some as high as $600 per bottle.

A single magnum of 1870 Cha^teau Lafite-Rothschild, unlabeled but certified genuine, which came from a famed collection discovered at Glamis Castle in Scotland, sold to a telephone bidder for $14,000, the opening bid. And a single bottle of 1921 Cha^teau d’Yquem sold for $4,715, believed to be a record.