People collect all sorts of things, from Beanie Babies to books about baseball to Bugattis. Serious collectors employ various methods to take care of their precious objects. If you can afford to collect Bugattis, then you have a special garage and a mechanic to tinker with them constantly. Book collectors enclose their valued volumes in acid-free wrappers and keep them in dust-free bookcases. Collectors of Beanie Babies display their acquisitions inside glass cabinets.

And wine collectors have temperature-controlled cellars, with humidity levels closely monitored, because great wines have to be carefully tended if they are to survive.

I mention these matters because an advertisement in Wednesday’s New York Times “Dining” section touted “The Greatest Collection of Domaine de la Romanee-Conti Sotheby’s Has Ever Offered” … “a range of the greatest vintages from 1947-2004.” This auction of “Magnificent Bordeaux and Burgundy from an Important Private Cellar” occurs in New York on April 10.

The wines listed are very impressive. I’m low-balling here; the wines are mind-boggling. Three bottles of Romanee-Conti 1959; six magnums of Romanee-Conti 1971; 4 magnums of La Tache 1971; two magnums of Richebourg 1949 and so on. The Domaine de la Romanee-Conti or DRC, is probably the single best-known and, in some estimations, the single best, wine estate in the world, and Romanee-Conti is that estate’s most esteemed vineyard.

Notice the estimated auction prices: Those three bottles of Romanee-Conti ‘59 — $25,000-$35,000. The four magnums of La Tache ‘71 — $32,500-$50,000. Higher by far, however, even higher than the most valued and sought after Bordeaux wines, like a case of Chateau Petrus 1961 ($55,000-$85,000), is the estimate for the six magnums (equivalent to a case of wine) of Romanee-Conti 1971:

$110,000 to $170,000.

Even if the bidding reaches only $150,000, that’s $25,000 a bottle.

And here’s what I have to say about that, all considerations of money, thrift, recession, ostentation aside: The wine will die.

Of all the objects that people collect, of all the grail-quest pursuits of fanatics and obsessives, whether pieces of string or books printed between 1485 and 1500 (known by the euphonious term incunabula) or the drawings of Rembrandt or the photographs of William Eggleston or tickets to long-lost vaudeville theaters, only wine is eminently perishable, only wine by degrees will inevitably diminish and lose its powers and its primary raison d’etre by becoming undrinkable, and the collector (or his anticipatory descendants) will be left with bottles of worthless liquid. This fate will occur even to wines that are perfectly cared for in the most meticulously maintained cellars.

Of course we read about the fabulous tastings of (mainly) Bordeaux red wines that include vintages going back to the 1860s and 1870s (or nowadays perhaps the early 20th century) in which the wines retain some body and weight and character or, more miraculously, seem young and vigorous. Wouldn’t we all like to have been invited to those events! I don’t have a great deal of experience with old wines, but I have tasted Beychevelle back to 1893 and Haut-Brion back to sometime in the 1930s; the wines were pretty wonderful, and educational, and I’m glad that I was allowed to participate in those tastings.

Think of the gamble, though. Factors like storage, transportation and bad corks can affect the quality of wine, of course, but the most stringent judgment that faces any bottle of wine, even more stringent than the estimation of critics, is the judgment of time itself. The arc of a great wine’s development, maturity and decline may vary from wine to wine and from vintage to vintage and from bottle to bottle (the other factors taken into account), but that arc cannot be avoided nor its implacability denied. The amount of money spent on a bottle of wine, whether $25 or $25,000, will not protect the wine from the certainty of its fate.

The lesson should be clear: Drink the stuff before it’s too late.

I’ve been looking through wine auction catalogs, those playgrounds for plutocrats. I mean, swoonability, big-time. The wines are legendary, iconic, names with which to conjure the cultural and historical annals of venerable regions and hallowed vineyards. Domaine de la Romanee-Conti. Bordeaux First Growths. Guigal Cote-Rotie. Gaja Barbarescos. California cult cabernets. Vega Sicilia Unico. Penfolds Grange. Page after page after page. The mouth waters; the mind reels.
I love the formal language of the wine auction catalog — quoting from the Hart Davis Hart catalog of “Finest and Rarest Wines” offered September 29 and 30 in Chicago — and its decorum. “Magnificent California Wines of a Distinguished Gentleman Collector.” “An Exceptional Collection of Bordeaux … from the Cellar of a Respected Connoisseur.” “A Small Yet Extremely Impressive Collection of French and American Rarities from the Cellar of a Long-Time St. Louis Collector.” (If one is to be small, one certainly wants to be extremely impressive.) And — my favorite — “A Stellar Group of Fine European and American Wines Including Numerous Rare Cult Wines from the Collection of a Doctor.” Well, that’s a relief; they must be good wines if a doctor bought them!

What’s most interesting in this catalog, besides the monumental wow-factor, are the descriptions or evaluations that accompany most of the lots. These are not written by the staff at Hart Davis Hart but culled from the writings of Robert M. Parker Jr., either from his bi-monthly journal The Wine Advocate or from various editions of his books about Bordeaux. True, occasionally the quotations are from Allen Meadows’ Burghound.com or Stephen Tanzer’s International Wine Cellar, but the vast majority of comments are from Parker’s writings and include the ratings on his 100-point scale.
Which leads me to wonder: Are American wine collectors so deeply attuned to Parker’s weighty and influential opinions and the iron-clad supremacy of his 100-point scale that they would not heed or even pay attention to other ratings and evaluations? And do the Boys with the Bucks — because you have to have Big Bucks to play this game — collect wine on the premise that they will not purchase what Parker does not rate over 90 points or, preferably, 95 to 100? And doesn’t this notion carry the implication that these players, endowed with unimpeachable fiduciary prowess, collect wine because of its status, because of the high Parker scores attached to them in a manner that makes study, research and thoughtfulness unnecessary? And – final question — do American auction houses recognize these factors and tailor their operations to the realities of a Parker-fueled world of wine?

Well, I like to tar with a broad brush, no question, but basically the answer to those interrogatives is “Hell, yes.”

It’s interesting to turn to three catalogs from wine auctions that Christie’s held in November in Paris, Amsterdam and Geneva. The catalog from the auction in Amsterdam — “30th Anniversary Fine and Rare Wines” — offers all sorts of intriguing lots, many of the same sorts of great Bordeaux and Burgundy wines offered at American auctions but with the addition of fascinating mixed lots where a collector could spend, say $350 or $400 and come away with 18 bottles of Burgundy from various producers and vintages. Wise buyers could take home all kinds of interesting and potentially exciting wines — or real clunkers, but that’s the risk involved.

What’s particularly interesting about this Christie’s catalog, however, for the purposes of this brief essay, is that there’s not a single note or evaluation or rating of any wine, only the usual description of the condition of the bottles. Guess what? You’re expected to be a grown-up and do a little research on your own, without depending on Robert Parker’s authority and rating. Gosh, could we actually take that kind of responsibility? Apparently they do in Europe.

The catalog from Paris is much the same, though the concentration is on fine and rare wines; even the typography is less crowded and cluttered to emphasize the seriousness and elegance of the situation. Except for a few notes (but not ratings) by Anthony Hanson for some older Burgundies, this catalog avoids evaluations and scores.
The situation is different, though, in Geneva — “Fine Wines Including a Magnificent Private Cellar” — because this catalog includes notes and ratings by Parker and by the British Michael Broadbent, the long-acknowledged dean of the world’s wine auction rooms and the creator of the wine department at Christie’s. (Broadbent’s notes are impressionistic and speculative; Parker’s are rigorously detailed and dogmatic.) I have to wonder: Were more Americans expected at this auction of truly magnificent wines from awe-inspiring vintages? Were European bidders endowed with new money there, confident in their ability to buy but not confident enough to make judgments unless guided by experts? My hunch is that the answer to those questions is “Yes,” but that would be supposition.

The cartoon image of the wine auctioneer is from winesquire.com.

The image of bottles of Bordeaux is from wine-selects.com.

The image of Michael Broadbent is from elmundovino.elmundo.es.

The Wine Spectator for December 15 reported that at Christie’s inaugural wine auction in Los Angeles on September 28, an anonymous telephone bidder paid $290,000 for a case of Chateau Mouton-Rothschild 1945 and capped that by paying $345,000 for a case of six magnums of the same wine. Talk about cornering the market. Ha-ha, that’s not the point of course, the point is that this gentleman paid $635,000 for two cases of wine. That’s an average of $26,458 for a standard 750-milliliter bottle.

Will he pop the cork on a few with the Christmas standing rib roast and Yorkshire pudding?
Ha-ha, well, that’s not the point either, is it, because one does pay one’s money and one does take one’s choice, doesn’t one, and if Mr. Anonymous Telephone Bidder wants to pour his Mouton ‘45 at the next office party, he has every right to do so, though some of us would spurn to cast pearls before swine. I vividly remember attending a party, in a small town in the Mississippi Delta, about 10 years ago, at which a young doctor was pouring magnums of Chateau Margaux 1981 as house wine, and people were lining up for it, glasses raised, saying things like “Damn good shit, whaddya say this was again?” And my reaction was to bloody the keyboard on his grand piano and kick off a couple of ivories, but that’s another story.
Anyway, what is Mr. Anonymous Telephone Bidder getting for his $635,000? Twelve bottles and six magnums of the wine that Robert M. Parker Jr. , in the fourth edition of Bordeaux: A Consumer’s Guide to the World’s Finest Wines (Simon & Schuster, 2003), calls “truly one of the immortal wines of the century” and asks the (seeming rhetorical) question: “Will it last another 50 years?”

Michael Broadbent, in Vintage Wine: Fifty Years of Tasting Three Centuries of Wines (Harcourt, 2002). describes Mouton ‘45 as “immediately recognisable, complex, endlessly fascinating, unforgettable … inimitable, incomparable … Seemingly tireless — indeed another half century anticipated.”

No need to go on; Mouton ‘45 is obviously one of the best and most long-lived wines made not merely in Bordeaux or France but in the world. Its reputation is not hurt by the fact that Bordeaux suffered from mediocre vintages throughout the 1930s and into the war-torn 1940s, but that the year of the end of World War II was the triumphant 1945. That was also the first vintage for which Baron Philippe de Rothschild commissioned an artist-designed label for the wine, a tradition that continues today.

Rarity is also a factor. Mouton made about 12,645 cases of the 1945 and 2,091 magnums. After 60 years, how much could be left? Broadbent and Parker themselves must had consumed a goodly portion.

So history, heritage, rarity and supreme quality make Mouton ‘45 perhaps the most sought-after wine for the world’s collectors.

But, you know, for $26,458 you could buy, well, what? One hundred, even 200 bottles of very fine wine indeed, getting your cellar off to a splendid start. A pretty damned stunning diamond bracelet. Half-interest in a Hummer. On the other hand, in many parts of the United States, $635,000 barely buys a decent house. On the other hand, again, $635,000 would probably feed and house and buy medical supplies and build a school and pay the teachers for the population of a village in Darfur for several generations, if there are any villages left in Darfur.

Again, what’s the point of all this?

I want a glass of that wine!

Sorry.