Click ’n’ sip: An online auction treasure hunt for pre-1986 California wines

Three online wine auction houses offer substantial lists of older California wines: winebid.com, ackerwines.com and brentwoodwine.com. At 5 p.m. PDT on the second Sunday of every month, Acker closes out its monthly auction, coinciding with the Sunday close of WineBid.com’s weekly auction at 6 p.m. I bid in both auctions closing April 13.

My goal: to purchase, for a tasting, a sampling of California Cabernet Sauvignons vintage 1985 and older with gavel prices less than $100. Acker’s suggested minimums appeared lower at first on certain wines, but its 21% premium, the auction house fee added to every sale, is higher than WineBid’s 14% and Brentwood’s 12%. Taxes and shipping are similar at all three.

WineBid makes it seductively easy to bid. With a couple of clicks, I had a list of all of the California Cabs on offer, oldest first. It was so easy that on the Thursday before the auction closed, I placed 15 bids in just a few minutes. My last bid was a doozy -- and proof that I’d fallen victim to auction fever: $420 for a 1978 Shafer Vineyards Cab (the point was to find affordable treasures, not pricey indulgences).

I immediately tried to rescind the bid (imagine shouting, “Oops, never mind!” at a live auction) but it was locked. For the rest of the week, twice a day, I checked my bids, hoping that someone would outbid me on the Shafer. On each of three much less expensive bottles, I countered one higher bid from other auction participants. But at 3 p.m. Sunday, panic set in. Mine was the winning bid on all 15 wines, including the Shafer, and I was way over budget.

I tiptoed into Acker’s online auction, pledging to keep my bidding to a minimum. By the time I figured out what I wanted, I had only an hour before the auction closed. I stuck around and saw the results right away. Out of five lots, I’d won two with minimum bids: A six-pack of 1985 Dominus at $66.66 a bottle and a four-pack of Mount Veeder, $20 a bottle. I’d had only one counter bid, which I raised, to win a 1978 Ridge Monte Bello Vineyard Cabernet for $180.I didn’t have the nerve to check my WineBid account until the next morning. Fortunately, the gods who protect crazy people had taken pity on me. I’d been outbid on the Shafer. Still, without increasing any of my bids, I’d ended up with 10 bottles of classic California Cabernets from vintages ranging from 1970 to 1985 at prices from $20 to $180 per bottle.

Joining me on the tasting panel were wine collector Vince DiPierro, Christie’s wine specialist Scott Torrance and K&L Wine Merchants manager Chip Hammack. We opened 10 bottles, a selection representing both auctions, uncorking them an hour before the tasting, pouring blind from the bottle, not decanting.

Our favorites, in order of preference, were a 1985 Dominus Estate Yountville ($66.66) that tasters called “brilliant”; a 1984 Chateau Montelena Estate Cabernet Sauvignon ($105), characterized as “plush” as well as “artful and sophisticated”; a 1970 Oakville Vineyards Reserve ($115), an “exciting” wine with vibrant eucalyptus aromas from a long-forgotten vintner; and a 1984 Dominus Estate Yountville ($95) that had a bit less fruit than the 1985 vintage. A 1977 Raymond and a 1985 Inglenook were drinkable but not highly recommended.

Of the 10 wines, four were solid winners. That may sound disappointing, but it was a higher percentage than the experts predicted. Of the four undrinkable bottles, two wines tasted as if they had been improperly stored, and two seemed as if they had never been much good.

The greater than 50% failure rate more than doubles the cost of the treasures you do find. Wine auctions are a gamble. The beauty of buying classic California wines is that you’ve put hundreds of dollars on the line, not thousands. Winners taste California’s past, making it all the more interesting to consider its future.