Not Just Any Burgundy...

At the prestigious charity auction that’s an annual highlight of the wine trade, Peter Richards MW gets the inside track on how wines bought here are helping one UK retailer to tap into a growing premium sector

- Peter Richards

‘EN VOULEZ-VOUS MONSIEUR?’ The auctioneer conducts the room like an orchestra, his insistent refrain urging potential buyers on from the stage. sitting a discreet distance from the front is a hunched bidder, ostensibly studying the brochure, in reality alert to every fleeting detail of the buzzy, fluid auction.

The bidding moves onto a meursault premier cru. The bidder has had sotto voce instructions from the buyer sitting directly behind: get this wine. in the context, it looks to be a rare bargain. The buyer is excited – yet increasingly jittery at the bidder’s inscrutable, unmoving demeanour. Had he heard the instructions? Barrel after barrel is sold. soon it will be all gone. The buyer can’t remonstrate – it risks undermining the bidder’s strategy – and this powerlessness only adds to the tension. memories of 2015’s ‘dramatic’ and ‘stressful’ auction resurface, when the plan ‘had to be torn up halfway through’.

Finally, the paddle is raised on one of the very last lots: the deal is done, the game expertly played, the wine secured at 40% less than the price of last year’s vintage. The tension diffuses; the auction proceeds. it’s a good buy. A bonus to complement the Beaune and the volnay already in the bag.

Such was one of the many scenes at the 2016 Hospices de Beaune auction in Burgundy. it’s a moment whose basic emotional and tactical plays will have reoccurred many times since 1859 at what is probably the world’s most iconic wine auction.

What wasn’t so usual was the identity of both bidder and buyer on this occasion. The bidder was mounir saouma of micro-négociant lucien le moine, the buyer Emma Dawson mW from British retailer marks & spencer.