Donor: Saul_Mutchnick at Championship Bottle
Value: What do you think it’s worth?
MinBidIncr: Just send in a number!
Auction Closes: 8pm PT
Championship Bottle - Rare, Very Rare Special Bottling - Two Magnums - Two Winners
But with the uniqueness and rarity of the wine, I couldn’t figure out how the hell to price it (or how much would even be for sale). So I asked Todd and Brig if we could combine one of my other interests–economics and auction theory–with wine, and send two magnums off to a good home to benefit WineBerserkers, which has given me so much over the years.
How To Bid - Pay Attention
That means we get to present WineBerserkers’ first-ever Vickrey Auction: A sealed-bid, second-price auction. What that means is that to bid, you’ll email with your maximum bid before the auctions close.
The two highest bids will win the auction, but (importantly) the price is set by the third-highest bid. The idea is to remove any game-theory elements from the auction process: simply bid your actual highest value, and know that if you win, you will be paying less than that. I’m covering shipping, and you’ll pay Todd once you’ve been notified that you’ve won.
Details on the Wine!
This is probably the rarest wine we’ll ever make: an extended-tank-aged version of our Friuli-inspired white wine, bottled only in magnums, each with a handmade and numbered label. Just six cases exist. Today, we’re making two of them available.
For the first two years of Championship Bottle’s existence, we were lucky enough to make a wine called Silicone on Sapphire—a blend of Ribolla Gialla and Tocai Friulano from Omero Vineyard, plus Dion Vineyard Chardonnay, and Twelve Oaks Pinot Blanc. But Omero sold and the Ribolla and Friulano were ripped out.
When we went to bottle the 2019, the final vintage, I decided to fill up a keg with the wine and some of the fine lees and see what would happen with extended aging in what was essentially a mini-tank. After two years of additional elevage—a total of 42 months on the lees—I thought it was ready, and we bottled it in spring 2023. It’s fundamentally the same wine as the 2019 Silicone on Sapphire, but with more texture, minerality, and a delightful savory edge. It should age effortlessly for a while.
We need more COW BELL!!! Todd is excited about this one.
I was there, I saw this first hand. I can’t “unsee it”
