One of the World’s Greatest Wine Collectors Is Auctioning Off Prized Bottles

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We’ve been hearing a lot about incredible opportunities in the secondary wine market lately, but Christie’s upcoming sale of a substantial portion of renowned wine collector and anti-fraud crusader William “Bill” Koch’s cellar is a true head turner. Featuring 1,500 lots of the finest vintages from the world’s best producers with a low estimate of $15 million, Christie’s first live auction in New York City in several years is set to be a three-day extravaganza filled with star-studded wines—including 750 superb large-format bottles—and some incredible under-the-radar values waiting to be snapped up by savvy buyers.

Koch admits his introduction to wine during grad school in the early 1960s was Portuguese rosé Lancers. “I remember it fondly because it came in a clay jug that you could use for a candle holder,” he tells Robb Report. However, he gravitated rather quickly toward Burgundy and Bordeaux and also became aware of California wines after the 1976 Judgment of Paris tasting threw a spotlight on the quality of Napa Cabernet Sauvignon. He’s spent the subsequent decades amassing one of the world’s greatest wine collections, growing it to a cellar so large there’s no chance he’d be able to work his way through it. So now he’s selling off a portion of his 20,000 remaining bottles (he auctioned off 20,000 back in 2016 as well) with the hopes of people actually drinking them. “I’m parting with wines that I have spent years collecting, caring for, and enjoying,” Koch says. “These bottles are like old friends. My hope is that other wine enthusiasts will drink them with their family and friends, laugh, and develop great memories. These wines are meant to be opened and enjoyed.”

The sale opens on June 12 with 48 separate lots of Champagne from the likes of Krug, Salon, and Dom Pérignon and continues through June 14, when those whose tastes run toward Napa powerhouses like Harlan Estate, Screaming Eagle, and Hundred Acre have their chance to score prize bottles. Highlights along the way include 295 individual lots of Domaine de la Romanée-Conti, 363 additional lots of Burgundy from producers such as Coche-Dury, Dujac, Comte Liger-Belair, and Meo-Camuzet, and 607 lots of Bordeaux headliners like Château Margaux, Petrus, Angelus, Château Lafite Rothschild, and Cos d’Estournel.

Pulled from the cellars of his homes in Palm Beach, Cape Cod, and Aspen, Koch says these bottles “may be among the most scrutinized in the world.” He sent bottles back to their home châteaus to check vintages against their records and to examine the paper composition and printing on the labels. “I’ve had them tested with a nuclear spectrograph to ascertain that their atomic structure matches the historic record,” he says. “I’ve had multiple experts from France, England, and the United States comb through my collection checking bottle shapes, sizes, labels, capsules and corks.” Additionally, Christie’s team researched and inspected his cellars, vetting every bottle and removing any that had low fill levels, evidence of cork seepage, or any issue that did not meet the house’s standards. It’s an apt level of inquiry for Koch, who is known in the wine world as the man who brought down fraudsters Rudy Kurniawan and Hardy Rodenstock. He believes that the level of scrutiny that he gives to bottles that he is buying or selling has inspired the auction house’s approach to authentication and quality control.

Koch tells Robb Report that he celebrated the 2013 Kurniawan verdict with a dinner in New York at Le Cirque that included Michael Egan, a wine expert who had testified in Kurniawan’s criminal trial, and FBI agent Jim Wynne, who helped bring him to justice. “We brought some of Kurniawan’s wines and drank them side by side with the real thing,” he says. “We opened a magnum Domaine de la Romanée-Conti 1978, a 1961 Hermitage La Chapelle, and a 1945 Petrus. Kurniawan’s La Chapelle was the closest he got to a match, but it still fell short. The other two were not close.” No stranger to celebration, Koch also had a chance to live it up after his 1992 America’s Cup victory, although that time the tab was on someone else; he and his team enjoyed sparkling wine from Chandon in Napa Valley. “Louis Vuitton, which sponsored the event, was handing out magnum bottles,” he says. “I couldn’t pass up a nice wine for free.”

Oddly enough, Koch did not meet many of the proprietors of the châteaus from which he bought bottles until after the fraud cases occurred. “I had several opportunities to visit Domaine de la Romanée-Conti over the years, but it wasn’t until after the Rudy Kurniawan trial that I met Aubert de Villaine and walked the vineyard with him,” Koch says. The same holds true for owner Christian Moueix and winemaker Jean-Claude Berrouet of Petrus. “We talked about how the counterfeiter Hardy Rodenstock flooded the wine market with large format Petrus bottles and got away with it for decades,” Koch says. Rodenstock first appeared on the château’s radar in the 1970s when some German collectors called the vineyard looking for provenance on large-format Petrus wines that they had purchased from the fraudster. “When Petrus said they had no record of ever making them, Rodenstock sent a stream of nasty faxes,” Koch says. “I have an entire collection of them.” 

Koch always had a penchant for large-format bottles because he loved entertaining with wine, Paul Tortora, vice president and international director of wine at Christie’s, told us. Hence that’s why there are so many hitting the auction block from the collection. “I have a long list of distinguished people who have shared my table,” Koch says. “Ted Kennedy was a frequent visitor on Cape Cod, as was John Kerry and his wife, Teresa Heinz. [NBA great] John Havlicek, a fellow Midwesterner, was my neighbor there and often came over. In Palm Beach my dinner guests have included governors, senators, cabinet members, and several rock stars and Hollywood entertainers.”

Among the treasures we sampled from the lots was Joseph Drouhin 1989 Montrachet Marquis de Laguiche from magnum, which was a gorgeous shade of yellow and had aromas of apple sauce, lemon curd, and lemon zest. Shockingly fresh, it had rich mouthfeel and fresh green apple, Bartlett pear, and butterscotch flavors with great acidity and a long finish. While many wine lovers may be gun shy about buying older white Burgundy, fearing the premature oxidation problems that were prevalent from the mid-1990s through the early aughts, that’s certainly not the case here based on what we tried. Multiple lots of white Burgundy are peppered throughout the three days of the auction, and they are among the best value gems on offer. For example, magnums of the Drouhin Montrachet have a low estimate of $600, a far cry from the $100,000 to $150,000 that a Methuselah of Domaine de la Romanée-Conti 1999 Romanée-Conti—which Tortora calls “the ultimate unicorn bottle”—is expected to fetch.

While the auction is filled with what Tortora refers to as “the icons, the collectibles, and the monuments,” there are plenty of bottles that are ready to drink now and are incredibly well priced. For example, another bottle we sampled, Cos d’Estournel 1990, has a low estimate of $150, which is below the price of the current vintage. It has intense concentration and flavors of elderberry and menthol. “It’s a beautiful wine that’s ready to drink today; it makes a lot more sense than buying the current release,” Tortora says. “At 35 years, it’s drinking beautifully, and you don’t have to tie any money up in storage costs.” Tortora also reminds us that many collectors focus on vintages rather than producers, and that incredible wines from 1989, 1990, and 1996 are well represented. “One of the things with this sale selection, you can really open the catalog to any page and you’re going to find something great,” he says.

Although Koch’s Palm Beach cellar looks a bit like a European museum, complete with Roman mosaics that he purchased at auction gracing the walls, he keeps his Château d’Yquem, of which there are 34 lots on offer, close to the entrance so he can run down and grab a bottle as dinner draws to a close. “Collecting these wines has been a labor of love,” he says. “With the exception of a few bottles I bought because of their historical significance, I have wines that I love to drink. I hope whoever buys them enjoys them as much as I have.” From unicorn collectibles that may never be opened to great vintage bottles from underrated producers, Christie’s sale of wines from the man known as the Great American Collector is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to build a collection of one’s own or find the next bottle for an incredible dinner party and even better story.

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