This is the real deal. There won’t be any fakes here. When I was in the biz in the 80s, his cellar was legendary then. Good news is that it’s NOT being offered via Acker.
I don’t see a link to the auction catalog in the article and didn’t find one on Christie’s website.
There was a story that Ben walked into the old Esquin’s sometime around 1970 and gave an order to a clerk who did not know him. He had seen that BX prices were rising so he decided to stock up. After a while, the clerk said, Wow, that’s over 200 bottles! No, he said, cases.
As Dennis Foley was his personal sommelier, I am surprised this is not being offered through Zachys. I am not sure what Dennis is up to.
I thought a lot of this wine had already been sold, as he lost interest in wine and got into art.
IIRC, Dennis has either passed away or is very ill. If I’m not mistaken, he contracted Parkinson’s. You’re correct on much of the wine already being sold. A local wine merchant (he’s still ITB) associated with Ben all through the years. He told me as such a few years ago.
Although the quantity that was left in his cellar was much smaller, I was working at Draper & Esquin when D&E purchased the Salvatore Lucia cellar in 1985. 7 bottles of '45 Romanee-Conti among other treasures. His widow told us that he started collecting DRC in 1919 or thereabouts!
I knew that Dennis was ill, haven t seen him in ten years at least. He always had great stories.
People who started collecting wine before 1972 or so could buy legends of wine for small change.
I found this link and you can also click through from that page to the E-catalogue, but bidding is not yet open: https://www.christies.com/salelanding/index.aspx?salenumber=19013&saleroomcode=nyr&lid=1&saletitle=
Jonathan
This will be an amazing one to follow though I imagine bargains will be hard to come by. I have wondered how many of these real-deal old cellars are still around, vs. the number of megacollections assembled in a few years from stuff that’s been around and around and around the auction circuit.
I think there are lots of amazing cellars in Europe. Maybe fifteen years ago I met a guy who printed wine labels in Bordeaux. He started to tell me about his collection…just everything in Bordeaux. Dennis Foley was a wizard at finding these guys.
Thank you for the heads up. There are some must-haves in here for sure.
7 bottles of 45 drc rc… I wonder how many of those they still actually have at the domaine…
I personally know a gentleman who likely has one of the greatest port cellars in the world. I’ve tasted priceless things at his home, and opened the drawers to see for myself. Boggles the mind.
There’s a guy in cellartracker that has 10 bottles and 3 mags of '45 La Tache that he purchased from Rudy. ![[cheers.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/0/0ff9bfcdb0964982cd3240b6159868fbdf215b1a.gif "cheers"){kind=small}
Here’s his cellar Wines from 'kinaadams@msn.com' - CellarTracker
zxzc with 240 bottles is just someone playing around
Lucia’s cellar had bottles of '45 DRC G-E and a full case or nearly so of Richebourg. We wondered why no La Tache. A couple of years later, a full case was found at a friend’s house in the Berkeley hills.
He has a lot of old Ponsot CSD as well, and old large format Petrus.
look at all the bottles this guy has purchased from Rudy. That person is active, they were just in CT two days ago… That’s wild, it’s like Rudy’s storage hideout awaiting his return
Posted in the Rudy thread to not mess with this thread
How does one even acquire such a haul of 1971 RC?
71 DRC wines were not really that expensive when they came out. We sold 72 Romanee St Vivant for $22.50 a bottle. Back then the key was you had to buy not just the Romanee Conti but all the other wines in a package. So a guy like Ben Ichinose could easily have bought a lot, esp since he appears to have been tight with Aubert’s father.
Wines were not so expensive back then. Barney Rhodes, who worked as a physician for Kaiser, amassed a huge haul of wine.
Where I worked the Fuller Brush guy bought a case of Lafite.
The Christie’s catalogue and the 1974 Ichinose cellarbook are both worth a browse. What cool history.
Coppola should buy the Inglenook
I had the good fortune of meeting Ben about 15 years ago at a local wine tasting. Looking back, it’s remarkable we even struck up a conversation given that I was an early twentysomething at the time who didn’t even know the grape varieties used to make the Burgundy wines in front of us then. It wasn’t until quite sometime later that I realized and understood the magnitude of his and Mayon’s wine connoisseurship and depth of knowledge.
Through Ben, I’ve met a good many lifelong friends - many of them prolific and significant wine collectors in their own right. I don’t want to speak for others, though I’m sure a great many could relate here, my passion and curiosity for wine would certainly not be close to where it is today were it not for Dr. Ben Ichinose’s legendary generosity when it comes to both his time and his cellar. I don’t believe it to be an exaggeration to say that Ben would just as readily (and happily) open a great Musigny or century-old First Growth for you whether you are a wine professional, dignitary, or just some random ignorant kid he met the other day at a tasting.
Sadly in this day and age, cellars with this level of unimpeachable provenance are too few and far between.
As Mel said, DRC was only sold in mixed cases then. Typically, 3 Ech, 2 GE, 1 RSV, 2 Rich, 3 LT, and 1 RC. The wines were easily obtainable. I belonged to a wine tasting group in Berkeley in the 80s with several members ITB. At one tasting, someone mentioned that we could get mixed cases of 71s for $600. 78s, too, for the same price. That was too rich for my blood at the time so I had to pass.
