Courtesy Hart Davis Hart Wine Co., Chicago

A jeroboam of Château Haut-Brion 1989, center, made $9,560 at Hart Davis Hart in January. The $4,800–6,500 estimate helped lure bidders.

Spring Wine Guide

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Wine collectors are facing an altered auction landscape this spring. “The market has been corrected pretty effectively,” says Charles Curtis, the head of Christie’s North American wine sales. And that could be happy news for buyers.

From the venerable London wine market to the new hub of Hong Kong, houses have scrambled to reduce their estimates. The Paris-based Tajan, for instance, sold only 55 percent of the lots offered at its December 2008 sale, so specialists lowered their expectations. For Tajan’s recent March 19 sale, a case of Château Cheval Blanc was expected to fetch €7,000 ($8,000), down from the €8,200 ($10,500) it brought at the house just one year earlier.

At the Sotheby’s New York sale on April 18, a case of Château Margaux 1989 is estimated at $2,250 to $3,000 — quite a change from the estimate of $5,000 to $7,000 it carried at the same venue in September 2008.

“The most important thing is pricing,” says Nikos Antonakeas, the head of the Morrell Wine Group, which conducts auctions in New York. He has lowered the average lot price in his sales. “Last year it was about $1,500. For the February 21 sale, it was closer to $700.” Morrell also changed its policy on passed lots. Last year bottles that didn’t find buyers simply went into the next auction with their estimates reduced by 10 percent; now the discount is 25 percent.

The auctioneers that adjusted quickly have already seen results. Chicago’s Hart Davis Hart Wine Co. had excellent sell-through rates, with 98 percent of the lots finding buyers, in both its December and January sales. Paul Hart, the firm’s president, attributed the sessions’ success to conservative pricing. A case of Jacques-Frédéric Mugnier Musingy 1996, a top Burgundy, for instance, was listed at $1,600 to $2,400 in the January sale and wound up bringing $4,182. The modest estimate, Hart says, drew bidders into the fray.

Wine aficionados’ newfound parsimony is also evidenced in a market shift regarding quantity. Before the recession, buyers paid up for unopened original wooden cases, known as owcs, holding 12 bottles. “These days, the six-bottle case is at a premium,” says Antonakeas. “People want to drink well, so they’ll buy a little less for now.” Just such a lot size of a California gem, Dominus Estate 1994, estimated at $850 to $1,400, went for $1,000 at Morrell’s February sale.

Lower estimates and fewer bottles aren’t the only paths to great bottles at good prices. The peculiar mechanics of wine auctions also provide plenty of opportunities. Unlike in an art sale, the items up for bid aren’t unique creations; they’re commodities. The same wine — Château Lafite Rothschild 1982, for instance — can be bought at many different venues, with multiple lots of the same vintage available even in the same sale. That fact allows for clever advance bidding, according to Hart. “It’s wise to place an either-or bid,” he says. “You can bid on all the lots, but just tell the specialist you only want one.”

This is especially true for Bordeaux, which make up the majority of the lots at most sales and are produced in larger quantities than the collectible wines of Burgundy, Champagne, and California. As Hart puts it, “Use the breadth and depth of Bordeaux to your advantage.”

Other experts agree. “I’d look at Bordeaux from good recent vintages that are in good supply,” says Curtis. “The ’05s have definitely struggled to find buyers.” That much-hyped vintage was popular as a “future” — wine sold before it’s bottled — but sagged in price last year.

To maximize value Curtis recommends a two-tier Bordeaux strategy: Buy the first growths (châteaus Lafite Rothschild, Mouton Rothschild, Latour, Margaux, and Haut-Brion) from high-quality years, such as 1995, 1996, 2000, and 2005, and well regarded “super seconds” (châteaus Cos d’Estournel, Pichon Longueville-Comtesse de Lalande, Pichon Longueville Baron, Léoville-Las-Cases, Ducru-Beaucaillou, and Palmer) in blockbuster vintages, such as 1982 and 1990, which may be too pricey for first growths.