Getting hammered: Fine wine auctions at Christie's

On 5 December 1766, James Christie conducted his first auction in London. But this year, as well as celebrating our 250th anniversary, we are marking 50 years since Christie's fine wine and spirits department was established. That first sale included ten lots of wine, cognac, madeira and port, but as Christie's gained a reputation in fine art, jewellery, books, furniture and so on, the category fell by the wayside somewhat.

In 1966, Michael Broadbent, a master of wine who had worked for wine merchants such as Laytons and Harveys of Bristol, approached Christie's and proposed a specialist department, convincing the owners there would be a good market for fine wines. He spent the rest of his career hunting down great collections, be they in old Scottish castles or plantation houses in the Deep South, and made extensive tasting notes – the oldest he has tasted is a 1645 canary sack. At 89, he is still a consultant for Christie's and his publication, The Great Vintage Wine Book, is the best resource for information on old wines.

For 40 of our 50 years, we were predominantly a fine wines department; it's only in the past ten years that the spirits category - whisky in particular - has really grown. It means we get a much more diverse group of collectors coming through the saleroom door; people who wouldn't necessarily engage with wine sales. Our client base has become much more global – Asia, South America, Scandinavia, as well as mainland Europe and the US – and so there are simply more people interested in spirits and they have the opportunity to bid. In the early days of these auctions, you either had to be in the King Street saleroom in St James's, London, or have a representative there on the phone. Now, you can watch online and bid in real time from anywhere in the world.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

Also, people are much more interested in food and drink generally and spirits are more accessible than wines. The level of quality you find in a bottle of a distillery's youngest single malt, say The Glenlivet 12 Year Old at around £40, is exceptional compared to an equivalent wine. The other thing is that if you buy a bottle of spirits, you can be fairly sure - because of the high alcohol level - that what you buy will be as it was intended to be when it was bottled: a perfect encapsulation of a moment in time. For wine collectors, there is an understanding that a few of the bottles will have been affected by oxidation, others may not have aged well, but the one or two that absolutely sing make the exercise worthwhile.

The days when the majority of people buying bottles hid them away as a collection are gone. Although some of the bidders are investing and speculating, many these days want to enjoy an exceptional moment with what they've bought. And, thankfully, working closely with clientele who collect, I can attest to the fact they open bottles because I've been lucky enough to taste special wines and spirits with them.

Someone who collects paintings can sit and look at them, but you can't crack them open. Uncorking a bottle propels you into an exceptional moment, an extraordinarily intimate relationship with the person who fermented the grapes or distilled the spirit, as well as with all those over the year who tended the barrels or laid down the bottle. In addition, I think that as consumers explore the nuances of different live releases from distilleries and land upon their favourite brands, many of them go looking for unusual experiences and rarities that can't be found on the retail market.

As well as weird and wonderful bottles, at auction you can become part of a story that transcends a brand – the journey of ownership can be just as fascinating and it's our job to trace a collection's provenance. Today, there are fewer discoveries to be found than in those early days of fine wine auctions, but when you do find something rare, it is all the more exciting. We sold a collection of spirits from La Tour d'Argent restaurant in Paris in 2012 and I was lucky enough to go and inspect it. Some of it was hidden underneath a layer of mould and, as I brushed it away, I found port, madeira and cognac going back to 1780.

There have been some fascinating sales and individual lots, including 14,000 bottles from the cellar of the Parisian restaurant Maxim's, a carboy of pre-Prohibition whiskey and cognac that was served to George VI at a banquet in Versailles in 1938. Recently, we had a very unusual lot. The Glenlivet master distiller, Alan Winchester, offered up his own bottle – one of only 100 – of The Winchester Collection Vintage 1966 single malt for auction to raise money for the British Crafts Council. We don't usually work with brands, but auctioning something that was created at the exact same time Christie's was preparing for its first fine wines and spirits sale was a lovely experience. The quality of the whisky spoke for itself, but there was an added dimension of the opportunity to travel to Scotland and spend time with Alan and lay down a cask of new-make spirit to be bottled in another 50 years. The lot fetched US$31,850, the second-highest price for any bottle of whisky sold at Christie's in New York.

NOAH MAY joined Christie's in London in 2007 as a junior cataloguer and progressed to being a fine wines and spirits specialist. In 2014, he transferred to the same role in New York, moving to the US with his wife – their son was born there in the summer of 2016. Christie's holds regular fine wines and spirits auctions in salerooms around the world, notably New York, Hong Kong, Paris and London. Many can be attended virtually through Christie's Live; christies.com