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Hidden Numbers

Written By: Kasey Carpenter on Wednesday, January 30, 2008

The Wine Auction Index - through these indexing methods wine experts try their best to gauge the value of wine. Unfortunately, the numbers can't reveal everything.

I think it safe to say that everyone who reads this column is in some way shape or form familiar with a wine auction index. Many publications have one, and refer to it from time to time to track the value of a certain bottle of wine over the years, and they do this by following what wine sells for what price at a few of the bigger auctions throughout the year, and across the globe.

However, like any graph, spreadsheet, or prospectus, these numbers can be fuzzy at times, downright illusory at others.

Some things to consider: let's say we are tracking the price of an '82 Latour. Okay, great bottle of wine with a huge amount of history, a great bunch of scores, the whole lot. Now, when you go to look at the graph, and the '82 is in there, what do you see? Well, you see that the wine has steadily risen, with a few peaks and valleys, but all in all it has gone up every year, and in recent years, it may have seen some real action (depending on which publication's index you read, a whole separate issue.) So it'd be safe to say that your bottle of wine is worth x based on the point in time in which you are selling it, right? Maybe.

First off, are you selling a 750ml bottle or a magnum (1.5l) and if so, you just double the price right? Wrong. Even though you are just getting twice the wine in a bigger bottle, larger formats almost always command more in terms of price (with some desert wines being an exception) so your magnum may fetch an additional ten to fifty percent over just doubling it. In turn, if the auction in question from which the index data was propagated only held data from the sale of a magnum, the index may have simply halved the sales price to give you the auction index result (all indices are based on the "given" of a 750ml format, unless otherwise indicated, as in the case of some desert wines that come in 500ml or even 375ml bottlings) giving you less than accurate numbers.

Then you have to ascertain if the bottle being sold was part of a collection. For instance, an intact case of '82 750's all twelve bottles, with tissue and wooden box, numbers matching - would fetch about the highest possible price one could get for a case of the wine in question. So if you merely divided the final selling price by twelve, you'd come up with a price much higher than the price for a single lot sale that was only one 750ml bottle of '82 Latour.

What about the bottle in question? Generally, those larger auction houses do not mess with consignments below say, five thousand dollars in total value, nor do they accept lots that either look shady or has a provenance that cannot be verified. So if your bottle has a low shoulder fill, a patchy label, and a capsule that has been long gone, well then, you may be in for a bit of a shock if you look at the index and then wonder why your bottle won't fetch the same price. There is a lot to be said for the outside condition of the bottle, while these are no guarantee that the contents are still what they should be, the more signs you have of ill-treated bottles, the greater the chances are that what you possess is some well pedigreed vinegar. So when buying with a mind to reselling, always, always, go for the higher fills and the better all around packaging. And of course, if you can obtain some sort of paperwork, proof, what have you, that the wine was bought by one person and stored by one person, this is far better than not knowing anything about the wine past a month ago when you bought it from anonymous party online. I always joke, but in a serious way, that when the prices of the wines in question reach into the prices of cars, you treat them as such, and the same rules apply, the more paperwork, the better.

So I'm not here to say that the indices are flawed, they are the best of what we have when it comes to tracking the price and current value of a bottle (at least for the bigger names) of wine, but you should know that the numbers can be conjured up in different ways, and while those numbers may not have an asterisk after them to tell you if this was one twelfth of a case lot, or the derived half of a magnum, you should understand that due to scarcity of these bottles, the numbers are suspect to such vagaries, and should never be relied upon for a hard and fast rule.

This week I had the fortune of drinking a wonderful Rose from Oregon. Stoller, in an act that seems to fuel the drinking habits of those within their ranks versus mass-market, has given up some (read: hardly any) of its highly sought after fruit for a lovely crushed Rose that give you a nose that lasts forever, and makes salmon absolutely sing. Again I hate to offer up wine you will be hard pressed to find, but if you do, get yourself a bottle and then some Copper River Salmon, preferably nailed to a soaked cedar plank. Life is good.

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apples7
Santa Barbra, CA
Posted on 2/01/08

At the end of the day, however; these numbers still determine what I can get for my bottle TODAY, until a better system emerges. I definitely agree with the flaws nonetheless.

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