I’m back in London this month, and while walking through Mayfair happened to stumble into a new store with by far the most impressive selection I’ve ever seen. Appropriately enough, it’s called Hedonism Wines. It was opened in August by Yevgeny Chichvarkin, a Russian cell phone magnate who left the country in 2008 after being accused of extortion and kidnapping (he could be shady, or could have just gotten on Putin’s bad side). He’s in the store every day. The former wine buyer for Harrod’s is its director. The very nice employee who indulged my curiosity for an hour told me that Chichvarkin simply got frustrated when he was unable to find a Roda Cirsion at retail in London–he admits he has a very New World palate–and decided to open “the world’s best wine shop.”
The place is very well designed on two floors, and holy mother of f does it have a collection. The “trophy vault”, behind a lock in the basement, includes pretty much every candidate for wine of the century. There are five bottles of 1947 Cheval Blanc, a 1961 Petrus and a magnum of the 1982, a 1961 Latour a Pomerol, a magnum of 1961 Latour, a 1961 Jaboulet La Chappelle, a 1947 Lafleur (seriously??), an AHEM 1811 Yquem (yours for $160K!), a 1923 DRC Romanee-Conti, and a 1945 Mouton. In the main room they have an enormous wall of Yquem, a complete Mouton vertical, 27-liter bottles of random stuff, and tons of Jayer Parantoux. Perhaps the most impressive thing about the store is the breadth of its trophies–there are about 10 old vintages of Heitz Martha’s (including a 1974, though it has a different colored label that reads “Anniversary Edition”–were there library releases of this?) and a ton of Quilceda Creek, old Monfortino and Giacosa red labels and a bunch of Gaja bottles signed by the head of the estate, really old Marqués de Riscal…they’ve got the creme de la creme of every region. It’s like wine porn–you could spend hours there just ogling. Though if you’re thirsty, they have a bunch of dispensers, and $50 will get you a 25-ml pour of 2001 Yquem! For sh!ts and giggles, they even have a rum called “Ron de Jeremy–the adult rum”, complete with The Hedgehog’s shining visage on the label.
The salesman told me they’d been buying at auction and from private collections for many months ahead of the opening. He assured me they were careful with their sourcing and can demonstrate provenance for everything, though if you’re buying on the secondary market I’m not sure what that really means. I didn’t ask about authenticity guarantees or return policies.
It’s hard for me to imagine there’s a viable business model behind this. Considering that the collection was acquired at the top of the market, they must have sunk many, many, many millions of dollars into buying their stock. The markups are pretty high–there’s nothing below $25 or so, and most trophies were selling for about double the Wine-Searcher low (e.g. $1,000 for a half-bottle of 1989 La Mission Haut Brion). But one would think that most people who play in that league would just buy at auction or on the Internet. The clientele would have to be, well, people like Chichvarkin himself, who value convenience and for whom price is no object.
Are there really enough of those buyers out there to cover the cost of their inventory, and their highly qualified and knowledgeable staff? Probably not. But I doubt Chichvarkin cares. It’s all chump change to him, and if he decides to open the world’s best wine store, nothing is going to stop him. Let’s wish him the best, and hope they start putting stuff on sale soon! If you find yourself in town, you have to pay a visit.
Their website is hedonism.co.uk. It doesn’t have their inventory up, but they’ve posted their full list on Wine-Searcher. I’ve posted a photo set at Hedonism Wines | Flickr.
