Why Buy Wine & Spirits at Auction?

Why Buy Wine & Spirits at Auction?

20/03/2020     Wine & Spirits

This upcoming sale is vast, with over 1000 lots, which will be sold over two days. Along with some incredibly rare bottles and cases that will be going under the Hammer in March, there are some cases of wine that are still available in the traditional retail market. So, ‘what’s the incentive of buying at auction rather than the local wine shop?’. Well, we price the bottles below the current price in shops to make it worth your while. A lot of these wines are drinking well now and wines such as the New Zealand Sauvignon’s have very good estimates and are intended to be drunk earlier in the maturing process.

We also have several rarities that will appreciate over the next few years/decades. The past few days, we have seen catastrophic drops in traditional investment markets so if there was a time to make an investment in a physical item that will grow in value, this is probably it. And we will happily sell it for you again in a few years’ time.

Typically, I’m not someone who spends thousands on a bottle very regularly. I’ve certainly spent hundreds on a bottle (although infrequently, and often with friends). It’s a misnomer that you have to spend thousands. There are a few cases in our upcoming sale that do however run to the thousands, including one bottle of Domaine Romanee-Conti, which is worth every buck. I’ve luckily had the opportunity to taste glasses of Romanee-Conti and it’s where I would spend the thousands if I could, it’s one of those transcendent wines that I could rhapsodise about and it will definitely hold its value during these turbulent times.

The glory of our auction is that we can take on single bottles from customers, cases that have been dipped into, or wines from Merchants, and then combine them to make an interesting mixed case. It’s almost like a lucky dip for fine wine and spirits and it’s an enjoyable process for clients to sample the different bottles and compare. We have quite a few cases like this coming up in our sale, check out our catalogue online.

We also take on small batches of rare whisky, which have been assembled from a broad range of sources. This sale alone, has the private cellar of an ex-wine-buyer at Selfridges, a Merchant who retired after 40 years, the grandchild of a Burgundian wine maker and a myriad of bottles from private collectors who’ve moved country and couldn’t take their wines with them. Much of it is drinking well now, and we have some impressive investment bottles and cases. It’s worth noting that wine holds its value when other investments often flag or stumble.

Despite concerns, I am confident that we’ll move through, survive, carry on, just as our ancestors did. The wine world will shudder and quake, but the good producers will survive, the previous vintages are all safe and bottled and we will keep moving forward.

In these unprecedent times, we want to ensure you that our Wine & Spirits sale will go on via our online selling platform, Chiswick Live. With 98% of our wine and spirits buyers already choosing this platform, we assure you it will be business as usual.

If you want to discuss this in more detail or if you require additional information and photos before the sale, please pick up the phone and give us a call.

Sam Hellyer
Head of Wine & Spirits

Call: +44 (0) 20 8992 4442