my auction purchases are about 60-65% of my total purchases.
I’ve had decent luck with aged bottles, some too old ie; 1966 Haut Brion but many great ones ie.,Domaine Ramonet Chassagne-Montrachet Les Caillerets 1985
Yeah, but you can’t really know the difference unless you’re tasting the same exact wine, one with ideal chain of custody and one with unknown. Otherwise, unless it’s really obvious, you can’t truly know a specific older wine isn’t in perfect shape because of a provenance issue.
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Certainly if it’s your first time drinking a specific bottle, but even considering age you can extrapolate if you’ve had the wine before, relatively recently.
I’m more likely to sell at auction these days than buy but I have bought quite a bit in the past. I highly recommend HDH to buyers knowing how well they check the wines I consign.
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So far, my wine purchase percentage from auctions has been 0-1%. But I do find myself getting more interested in such as I speak to some of my collector friends who contend that they can get cheaper than retail on recent vintages as well as older gems. The risk of bad bottles with no recourse has been my hesitation thus far, in addition to the buyers fees making me a little wiggy.
Okay, sure, but that’s such an incredibly small percentage of tasting, the same exact old wine relatively recently.
My point is that even those who have tasted a lot of old wine don’t really know (again, unless something is obviously wrong). They can make an educated guess, but I don’t think it’s as certain as you’re suggesting.
I think it happens a lot more than you think. For example, I’ve have had 96 and 98 rousseau csj, chambsrtin and ruchottes like 4x in the last 2 years, and bottles performed very differently.
Out of how many bottles did you taste over the past two years? And you’re just one person.
I think that what I’m objecting to is this underlying suggestion that, unless you taste a lot of wines, you’re a sucker at auction. I know that’s not what you’re directly saying, but that’s sort of the implication, and that’s simply untrue. I’m not downplaying the benefit of experience with older wines, but even with that knowledge base, tasting is still very subjective.
What difference does it make how many bottles it was? Some of the bottles were from my cellar and purchased from one owner French cellars, and others had questionable provenance and didn’t show well. It was patently obvious which had poor provenance. Not all auction bottles have bad provenance, and not all retail bottles have good provenance, but most of the poor experiences I’ve had have been from bottles from auction.
Probably 10-20%
I don’t drink much (maybe 2 cases per year), but the majority of what I do buy comes from auction.
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I used to buy a fair amount, but lately I’ve been sticking to a few producers that I buy annually direct. My experience was very, very few bad bottles. The wines I bought tend to be bought by people who know what they’re doing and the auction house. (Spectrum) Is within a couple miles of a handful of large offsite storage facilities, where these Wines almost certainly spent Most of their life before being put up for auction
Great thread, @T_Altmayer. Thanks!
I just limped in - in 2024.
I use auction to find back vintages of wines I enjoy. I’ve used Spectrum, Zachys, and Winebid though i’ve yet to collect and order.
My preference would be to buy more from the cellars of folks I know directly, or secondary through retailers I trust (chambers for example), but the first option is an exercise in timing and the second - you’re under the gun to make a decision whereas an auction I have time to do my research.
If you are buying through Chambers, you may very well be doing both, as lots of folks on WB have sold there.