Collecting wine

Wine collectors are facing an altered auction landscape this spring. From the venerable London wine market to the new hub of Hong Kong, houses have scrambled to reduce their estimates. The Paris-based Tajan, for instance, sold only 55 percent of the lots offered at its December 2008 sale, so specialists lowered their expectations. For Tajan’s recent March 19 sale, a case of Château Cheval Blanc was expected to fetch €7,000 ($8,000), down from the €8,200 ($10,500) it brought at the house just one year earlier. At the Sotheby’s New York sale on 18 April, a case of Château Margaux 1989 is estimated at $2,250 to $3,000 - quite a change from the estimate of $5,000 to $7,000 it carried at the same venue in September 2008.

Lower estimates and fewer bottles aren’t the only paths to great bottles at good prices. The peculiar mechanics of wine auctions also provide plenty of opportunities. Unlike in an art sale, the items up for bid aren’t unique creations; they’re commodities. The same wine - Château Lafite Rothschild 1982, for instance - can be bought at many different venues, with multiple lots of the same vintage available even in the same sale.

That fact allows for clever advance bidding. This is especially true for Bordeaux, which make up the majority of the lots at most sales and are produced in larger quantities than the collectible wines of Burgundy, Champagne, and California.

To maximise value the experts recommend a two-tier Bordeaux strategy: Buy the first growths (châteaus Lafite Rothschild, Mouton Rothschild, Latour, Margaux, and Haut-Brion) from high-quality years, such as 1995, 1996, 2000, and 2005, and well regarded “super seconds” (châteaus Cos d’Estournel, Pichon Longueville-Comtesse de Lalande, Pichon Longueville Baron, Léoville-Las-Cases, Ducru-Beaucaillou, and Palmer) in blockbuster vintages, such as 1982 and 1990, which may be too pricey for first growths.