All wine auction lots should be photographed and posted on the web site

Wine is not like most other auctions. Nobody in their right mind would buy a painting or an antique chair without seeing a photograph, so why should we be asked to buy wine on a catalog description?

Look at the descriptors. High shoulder? Hmm! I had one auction house director tell me that the wines at their auction house, “high shoulder” might be different to “high shoulder” at others. I returned the wines, because they were mid shoulder at best. "Excellent appearance? "? The wine arrived a dull, nasty brown liquid with as much hope of being drinkable as I have of winning the 100 meter sprint in the London Olympics.

There are plenty of war stories from buying at auction, but the bottom line is, that we as buyers, do not have the same opportunities to inspect the wines as we would other auctionable items. Getting pictures as standard would be a tremendous help to the buyers, and give them a measure of confidence, they might otherwise not have. Not a bad selling tool for the auction house.

On the down side, yes, it would cost a little extra to photograph every wine. It is a couple of minutes of extra labor,and a little extra work but as most lots are well over a thousand dollars, giving a minimum of a couple of hundred dollars of vig, it is a relatively small amount for all that consumer confidence. I know a couple of auction houses have started to do it; I think it is time for the rest to join in.

Why would anybody “in their right mind would buy a painting of an antique chair” at all? [scratch.gif]

I do agree though. Just yesterday, I looked the HDH online auction and had the same thought.

Mark, couldn´t agree more with you.
In fact nowadays when a lot of wine auctions have an online-calalogue it´s happening more often than before - but still not for every lot, only for old and more expensive ones.

The question is also: what with OWCs ? Opening them? What with multiple lots of the same wine and vintage (especially Bx). I guess they would simply take a “similar” pic - and use it for years when regarding Lafite, Cos, LasCases etc …

I often ask for pics - and often get them, but only for old vintages (30+y) and high priced ones.

(BTW: I once bought an unopened OWC, and got one with 11 bottles only!)

Another question is: what about a guarantee that the wine is genuine?
I once asked an auction house “how could they know that the bottles of (mature) Chateau Rayas are genuine, since the cork isn´t branded before 1996, and there are known fakes”.
Answer: Sure they are genuine … they have inspected them!

(nobody can see this without opening and tasting …) [scratch.gif]

I have also had the 11 bottle case; as a buyer I would expect the notation to have read, that the "banded"case was opened, and bottles inspected.

I use a warehouse where the wine is inspected by them prior to inventory. It’s an incredibly strong point in my favor if there are problems, as they are a third party and can vouch for the fact that these the wines originally sold. I can imagine that some people have tried to switch wines and then return them to the auction house, another reason BTW to photograph the wines.

Most auction houses have a 30 day return policy, but if you are a good customer, that is pretty flexible.

Not sure what to suggest for Rayas. I know it’s faked, but never seen one (or more accurately I may have seen one and never known it)

Agree with this also.

The Acker catalog is always amusing with all their generally unrelated (to the lots) stock photos, but at least they seem to have gone back to adding in some relevant photos again…


And, what’s up with their crappy website??

Turn over $30M a year or something and they have a website that looks and functions like it was made 10+ years ago…a really poor effort!!

This is how I feel about buying a wine without points. [whistle.gif]

Even worse, I´ve tasted a faked Rayas (fortunately not my bottle, a friend brought it proudly - and was immensly disapointed when I had to state that it is most probably Rayas, but not the praised 1990, rather more probably 1993!)
One cannot buy Rayas pre-1996 today without knowing exactly where the bottles have been 1st purchased. Mine are fortunately directly from M.Jacques …

FWIW, I know for a fact that they are in the middle of a very ambitious redesign, so I would recommend giving them a little breathing room.

Probably a few years overdue, but at least they are doing something…