first auction bids

[L Brown]

Hello,

I've been lurking for about 10 years and have been getting more serious about my collection of ports for the last 5 or so. I have a decent selection from 2000+ but am starting to look for older things. I have bought only at retail so far but I am starting to look at auctions and wondered if there was anything specific I should watch out for. I had my eye on a few of the bottles in the current winebid auction. I'm digging through the older forum posts as well.

[John M.]

I've had good success with wine bid. I avoid SOS (signs of seepage) and protruding corks unless the price is right. If buying a case one or two leakers might take a flyer. Just depends on the deal.

[L Brown]

Thanks! I may have to skip this auction to get a better feel for prices, but it seems much better than picking everything up at total wine like I've been doing. I bought a bunch in turks and caicos when I went and managed to shatter a 1980 neiport. A real shame since the other one was excellent.

[Mike J. W.]

Just about anything from 1994 is going to be good. Taylor's and Fonseca are the stars of the vintage, but you'll also pay top dollar for them unless you can snipe a bid. I just opened a '94 Croft and it seems promising. The Graham's and Vesuvio are also excellent from '94. A sleeper from '94 that I like is the Quinta Do Crasto VP.

From the '80's, the Fonseca '85 is the top VP of the decade. You can still find them relatively cheap and they're just coming into their own. The 'SQVP '87 Taylor's Quinta De Vargellas is excellent as well, but hard to locate anywhere. The '83 & '85 Graham's are good. If you can find an '82 or '83 Ramos Pinto VP, grab as many as you can. Also keep an eye out for the SQVP 1986 Graham's Malvedos. It's delicious.

I won't go further back than that in this post other then to say that two VP's you'll see fairly often at auction are the '77 Gould and '77 Smith Woodhouse. The Gould can have some bottle variation but a good one is very good and the '77 SW is very good as well. They can usually be found at a good price at auction, especially for a 46 year-old VP.

[Mike J. W.]

Hello,

I've been lurking for about 10 years and have been getting more serious about my collection of ports for the last 5 or so. I have a decent selection from 2000+ but am starting to look for older things. I have bought only at retail so far but I am starting to look at auctions and wondered if there was anything specific I should watch out for. I had my eye on a few of the bottles in the current winebid auction. I'm digging through the older forum posts as well.

As far as auction sites, John's right, Winebid is a good place to find a variety of Ports. Ackers, Zachy's. The Chicago Wine Company auctions and Heritage Auctions (out of TX) are good. Brentwood Auctions which are a part of Benchmak Wines has some good stuff, but they've really jacked up their shipping costs and I'm buying much less from them because of it. Bonham Skinner has some good stuff at their auctions but it's usually (but not always) larger lots. Arranging shipment (you have to use a 3rd party shipper, but they recommend one) can be a pain with them, but it's possible. Good luck.

[L Brown]

I’ll have to take a look at those. Getting shipping to west Texas is often a pain

[Moses Botbol]

Protruding corks is the main thing I would be concerned with. Signs of seepage is common with port. Even the best cellars have leaking bottles. If it weren't for wax seals, I fret to think what would happen to many vintages.

Make sure you calculate hammer fees, local tax, and shipping when bidding. Not everything is a deal at auction like it was in decades past.

[Eric Menchen]

As far as auction sites, John's right, Winebid is a good place to find a variety of Ports. Ackers, Zachy's. The Chicago Wine Company auctions and Heritage Auctions (out of TX) are good. Brentwood Auctions which are a part of Benchmak Wines has some good stuff, but they've really jacked up their shipping costs and I'm buying much less from them because of it. Bonham Skinner has some good stuff at their auctions but it's usually (but not always) larger lots. Arranging shipment (you have to use a 3rd party shipper, but they recommend one) can be a pain with them, but it's possible. Good luck.

I'm not buying wine this year, but I've purchased from a majority of the auction sites over the years. Last year I think I was limited to WineBid and Acker. Here are some thoughts:

WineBid - not the lowest prices for sure. In fact, for many of the non-Port wines the prices can be higher than what you can find at retail. I look carefully at prices of Champagne, Bordeaux, and California stuff. I suppose I scrutinize the Port prices, but I have a pretty good memory of those so I don't have to go investigate on wine-searcher.com. But the bottles are usually in good shape (and described if not), and you can find plenty of things at fair prices and an occasional bargain. I like WineBid because the website works very well for finding, bidding, and even arranging shipping. Shipping from California has become much more difficult, and WineBid arranges that with an affiliated company, Global Storage Network. You get a notification when you are switching from one website to the other, but it all works pretty transparently. They used to store wine for free for up to 6 months, but that period has been reduced. I sometimes end up paying a small amount for storage of some bottles until I can consolidate for shipping when the weather allows.

Acker - I think Acker has some of the lowest standards for bottle condition, but they do tell you with a lot of codes what the condition is. But you don't get nice photos for the online auctions by default. Acker also has some of the best bargains. I won't pay as much for a bottle at Acker as I would at WineBid or Chicago Wine Company because of my skepticism of bottle condition or provenance. Acker also used to have a more generous storage policy, but that just changed this year. I have a few cases with them at the moment and will have a better idea in a month or two how painful the new storage fees are. I might end up shipping a little earlier than in past years after I get those bills.

Benchmark/Brentwood, Spectrum, K&L, Wally's ... I've bought from all of these in the past, but since shipping became more difficult from California, I haven't bought from them lately. There was a Christie's Los Angeles auction I was really interested in last year, so I found a third-party shipper and figured out it could be done. But the cost and trouble seemed too much to make it worthwhile.

Zachy's - I've liked them in the past, but haven't purchased in over a year. I would certainly consider them again in the future.

Christie's - I've like them in the past, but shipping seemed to get out-of-line compared to other options, so I steered away.

Chicago Wine Company - Most beautiful bottles I've purchased at auction. They had a caveat emptor section of their auction and even those bottles seemed quite nice. I think I probably veered away from them because of price and difficulty bidding. I wonder if they've made things more user friendly these days.

HDH - Just used once for a case of 1977 Warres. It was fine for condition, but not outstanding given the price.

Leland Little - Just used once for a bunch of Vesuvio. I got a good price on that, but I don't recall being overly impressed by their service.

My purchase notes indicated I bought from JJBuckley auctions in the past, but I don't think they do auctions any more.

[L Brown]

Thank you. That is very helpful information. I. Especially appreciate what bottles to look out for and not get

[Lucas S]

Everyone covered the auctions and ports very well.

I would note that that auction supply is like the tide, sometimes there are 400 bottles of Port from Portugal on WineBid and sometimes there are just 123 mostly higher-end bottles, like there are this week. So you have to keep checking, especially if you have something specific you are looking for. If you are open to most any good quality port, I would say they start to be readily available for ~$40 a bottle (shipped and everything). Warre's in particular, tends to be very affordable at auction - it doesn't matter if it's 1977 or 1997. I've seen it regularly hammer in the low $30s at Zachy's among other places. Before bidding it's good practice to check tasting notes here and on the uk theportforum, especially horizontal tastings. For example, from those I gathered that 1991 Croft, is apparently one the best of that vintage. But since Croft put out a fair share of duds for a while, it probably doesn't have the best reputation in the auction market - making it a fairly easy pickup.

I've been lurking for about 10 years

7 years but no posts, that has to be some highly unusual record broken - like the Detroit Lions winning two playoff games in a row.

[L Brown]

I try to keep my comments off the internet for the most part. I’ve been watching port for a long time and only in the last few years started to get serious about collecting now that I’m a little more settled in my job and not moving around so much.

[Andy Velebil]

I try to keep my comments off the internet for the most part. I’ve been watching port for a long time and only in the last few years started to get serious about collecting now that I’m a little more settled in my job and not moving around so much.

Congrats on getting settled into your job and please do post a bit more.

[L Brown]

I picked up my first bottles. 2 94 dows, a 1985 neiport and 2 2000 Taylor. I had a couple of the 2000 in the cellar and I’ve opened the 1985 in the past. I was trying to get to a case before it got hot. It should all arrive tomorrow.

[Andy Velebil]

I picked up my first bottles. 2 94 dows, a 1985 neiport and 2 2000 Taylor. I had a couple of the 2000 in the cellar and I’ve opened the 1985 in the past. I was trying to get to a case before it got hot. It should all arrive tomorrow.

Nice score!