FEATURES ARCHIVE

Collectors know that buying wine is becoming an increasingly challenging endeavor. Not only is it difficult to find the right wine, of the right vintage at the right price - but even more crucially - to acquire the correct and most perfect case of that particular wine. Bottles rarely exhibit their intimate past at first glance and so the buyer is well advised to take time out to discover exactly where their chosen case has spent its life to date.

Perfect provenance of any valuable object increases desirability. This applies to wine as much, and maybe even more, as it does to any artwork or object. For wine, this detailed history is the only available link for the buyer to establish a correct period of proper storage for that specific case of wine - whether long or short in time span. Remember, once a wine is spoiled through poor storage it can never recover!

Provenance of this type - or 'case history' - can take different forms. Two examples from our forthcoming Finest and Rarest Wines auction in Hong Kong show the importance of this in two different ways.

Lot 291 is a case of 12 bottles of Chateau Pétrus 1947 estimated at HK$150,000-200,000. This is a rare wine and much sought-after. This particular dozen, bottled by the highly-regarded Belgian firm of Vandermeulen, takes the rarity to a new level of provenance as they are part of a larger stock of identical bottles held in a single location by a family who acted as distributors for Pétrus and many other mainly Right Bank wines during the 1940s and 1950s. Excellent professional storage and only one owner for half a century - now that's what I call provenance. Samples tasted, still under their original corks, were unmolested and faultless.

Since 1982, the cult of the private enthusiasts has grown out of all proportion when compared to previous decades. On occasions, it is still possible to 'discover' very large caches of top wines in private hands from that eternal vintage that literally makes the jaw drop. One such collection, including over 500 cases of First Growth 1982 wines, became known to us a few years ago - all still lying in original wooden cases, slumbering in perfect cool storage under the rural English countryside. At selected moments, the fortunate owner chooses to release a tranche of these perfect wines through auction at Christie's. The undoubted highlight of the latest offering are the ten dozen Chateau Lafite-Rothschild 1982 cases which open the Hong Kong sale with lots 201-206 (estimate HK$150,000 - 200,000 per dozen).

So there you have it - provenance is paramount - if you want to only acquire wines with the perfect past, so you can treat them to the perfect future - accept no substitute and insist on knowing the Case History of your wine!