It sounded like this guy lived in the inner Richmond
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I lived in SF for a while.
In 1979, Pacific Wine Company opened. It was a great store and stocked DRC.
That 1971 was likely already out and about, I wonder which a store it is from?
The really cool thing about Pacific Wine was that buyers from Asia would buy a case of DRC and only have the store ship the Romanee Conti…all the others were “cheap.”
I.e. 50-70 dollar ranges for La Tache and Echezeaux in the late 1980’s.
Hopefully, that bottle was simply sitting in the dark, way back in the basement all this time. Hopefully, not on top of a china cabinet in the dining area!
Thanks M Chang,
Not the coolest part of the city, but still pretty cool. Sounds like about a mile inland each from the Pacific and the Golden Gate. The microclimate in the neighborhood and in the house would matter.
Also, as far as fill, humid places fare better than drier places and San Francisco is humid.
Dan Kravitz
I recall the Chronicle article saying that the owner lived in South San Francisco but did not say where exactly. That is potentially a huge difference as SSF is warmer but not lacking for fog.
Did anybody notice that the box the wine came in was sent from Domaine Chandon to AE Harris??
Roger’s store fell apart in some kind of family feud. He just kinda disappeared. He would have to be in his late 80s by now.
In the winter of '79 Draper-Esquin listed a normal bottle of '71 La Tache for $98. No pictures!
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Cool story in the Washington Post about a lucky dude who squirrled away a jeroboam of La Tache. Ullage looks damn good, too.
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SF is a cool place to temperature wise. Good thing it survived the 89 earthquake.
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That’s quite a story and that old saying seem to stay true… once you go DRC you never go back.
If someone really wants to ruin the wine thing for me, just go ahead and pour me some DRCs.
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It’s not really true.
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How warm or cold is it in his basement during summer?
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Gotta agree with this. I splurged to try a DRC Grands Echezeaux a few years back…and lets just say I’m definitely still not a Burgundy guy 
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Several years ago Jon Favre opened that very bottle for me on a visit to AZ. 750ML of course. Not sure it was a $20,000 bottle (I get the rarity and size and all that, just joking)!
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I think you drank that wine way too young, but not being into burgundy is probably a good thing financially. I love DRC wines, especially la tache, but they aren’t really wines you want to open on a weeknight, simply because they are a lot of wine between the use of new oak and whole cluster etc; to me, sort of the wine equivalent of a tuxedo to me. Rousseau charmes, caz, clos de village, or probably even CSJ, I could drink any time, though.
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Its kind of sad these days when I read a story like this and I’m kinda skeptical. These days the picture with the baby is easy enough to fake. The serial number seems really high for a large format btl, not to mention the fact that the market pays such high values for wines that the storage has been marginal at best for 50yrs.
thoughts?
Don’t know how to ping Don, but I’d be curious about his thoughts.
The photo at the auction looks like the top of the wax capsule has been pulled off… certainly another concerning thing about that bottle. Wouldn’t trust any burgundy that’s been passively stored casually for over 50 years…
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Cork is protruding a bit too
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The summers are cool in San Francisco (fog comes in off the ocean). The warmest months are September and October, when the highs can occasionally get into the mid-80sF (~30C). But most of the time the highs are more like mid-70sF (~25C) in early fall.
For ten years, I stored wine in a basement storage room in my apartment building in SF. It was at ground level and not below and almost open to the air – not like a closed basement in a house partly below ground. The air in my storeroom got to the high 70s (~26-27C) some days, but nighttime temperatures were generally well below 68F/20C. I had 40 cases stacked up, so the thermal mass kept the wine cooler. I have a number of wines from that period still and I’ve seen any evidence of premature aging.
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It also depends where you live. The sunset in general is freezing.
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A.E. Harris was an incredible little wine shop in there Richmond District in SF that had been around since at least the 40’s and probably quite a bit earlier at that location. Was the first wine shop I had ever gone into since it was right down the street from my house in the late 70’s early 80’s. Had a glass cabinet in the back of the store with wines dating back decades. I remember one Madeira from the late 1700’s. I believe they closed in the mid 80’s. Pretty cool story.
You don’t think the auction house didn’t do a thorough vetting of that bottle before accepting it?
As an aside, I worked at Draper & Esquin in the mid-80s. I was there when they acquired the Salvatore Lucia cellar from his widow. He was a doctor at UCSF and started collecting DRC in 1919. She wanted to endow a chair with the proceeds. What was left was DRC back to 1934 and other amazing wines, too (large format first growth Bordeaux from the early 50s, etc).
The wines were in great shape. I really wanted that mag of '62 Romanée-Conti.
What remained of the cellar was stored in a laundry room at ground level. His house was in Ingleside Terrace in the west part of SF, not far from 19th Ave/Junipero Serra Blvd. Geographically, that’s pretty close to where this jero was stored.
My take is that this is the real deal.
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Lol Jim. It was a '78 magnum so not anywhere close to this unicorn 
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