FEATURES ARCHIVE

I recently visited the cellar of a wine connoisseur and collector in Switzerland. I’ve known him for a few years now, and he called me to say that he needed to sell some wines as his cellar continues to shrink. As they say, "there’s only one cellar size: too small."  

The train from Geneva to the Valais is a must-see, with gorgeous views of Lake Geneva (Lac Leman) and, of course, incredible views of the Swiss and French Alps. I’m always amazed by the beauty of that Unesco world heritage site, the Lavaux Vineyard Terraces, when you pass by Lausanne in the Vaud region.

Arriving at the collector’s house, we went directly to the "carnotzet," and began to discuss which of his wines would be best to sell in the current market. In the Valais area, a "carnotzet" is a small room close to the cellar where you can taste wine with friends and eat Swiss cheese and viande de Grison. Two of the collector’s friends came for a quick lunch and we tasted a Montrachet 1973 and 1998 from the Domaine de la Romanée-Conti.

We then moved to the cellar. When inspecting a collection for consignment, I always check the cellar for proper storage. That’s just what I found, in this case. Then I check every bottle, capsule, cork and the colour of the wines to make sure everything is in pristine, saleable condition. Eventually, we selected an impressive collection of Romanée-Conti and Montrachet including a jeroboam, magnum and bottles of Romanée-Conti 1999, 5 bottles of Romanée-Conti 1990 and cases of Montrachet DRC 1998 to 2002. All in all, we decided to sell more than CHF 400,000 of Romanée Conti and Montrachet in our May sale. We then moved to the Rhône with the recent release (2008) of Hermitage La Chapelle, the legendary 1961 (a case of 6 bottles) and 12 magnums of 1978. We spent the afternoon in the cellar checking and talking about the wines. I finished the day packing up 12 bottles of Petrus 1990 and went out of the cellar quite cold, but happy and content that I had seen, inspected, and even drunk some of the most legendary wines of the century.

After this long day we went for dinner at The Pont de Bent restaurant near Lausanne. Believe me, like Michael Broadbent does sometimes for exceptional wines, I would give 4 Michelin stars to Gérard Rabaey for his exceptional meals. The client took some wines with him for the dinner, a perfect magnum of Cheval Blanc 1961 and an impressive magnum of Latour à Pomerol 1948. Eventually I made my way to my hotel room, images of our last wine, Yquem 1949, still dancing in my head.

Contact:
Michael Ganne
Specialist
mganne@christies.com
+41 (0)22 319 1760