A dozen bottles of Chateau Petrus from 1990 and 1989 led the first Delaware Acker auction, selling for $ 52,290 and $ 49,800, respectively. | PHOTOGRAPH courtesy of ACKER
NEWARK – When the hammer fell on the last of 1,190 individual lots of some of the best wines in the world during a live online auction held three evenings last week, Newark became a major alongside New York, London and New York Hong Kong wine auction player.
The auction was the first scheduled monthly event in Delaware, conducted live and online by Acker, the New York auction house founded in 1830. The new warehouse and auction house opened last month in a Delaware warehouse at 1800 Ogletown Road.
According to Acker, the event proved to be a real world beater, generating $ 6.5 million in sales and breaking 152 world records in auction performance.
“We’ve been working on this opening for six months,” Acker chairman John Kapon told the Delaware Business Times during the auction last week. “There are many perks of being located in Delaware – tax benefits, friendly business laws, and a great place for wine investors to store wines.”
Although perhaps less well known than Christie’s and Sotheby’s, which also auction art and other luxury goods, Acker – better known as Acker Merrall & Condit Companies – has the oldest wine shop in America, dating back to 1830, and the world’s largest wine auction house.
In 2020, the company had global sales of $ 122 million, while Sotheby’s sold wine worth $ 92 million – both increases over 2019, an example of the growing fine wine market. In addition to Delaware, Acker has large auction facilities in New York and Hong Kong.
Much of the wine that can be collected worldwide is never actually consumed, but is bought in large quantities as a financial investment for resale on a so-called “secondary market” at a later date. While individual collectors can store all or part of their wine collections, which sometimes reach many thousands of bottles, in their apartments, investment firms often store them in temperature and humidity controlled warehouses. As Jamie Ritchie, Sotheby’s global wine auction manager, noted several years ago, large private wine collections are generally auctioned for “the three Ds – death, debt and divorce”.
The premier wine auction house Acker recently opened a new facility near Newark. | DBT PHOTO BY ROGER MORRIS
Until recently, most wine auctions were held in person and were held in large, well-appointed auditoriums at auction house headquarters. Further bids were made by telephone and directed by a quick-talking auctioneer, whose hammer blow signaled that the lot was sold.
However, there have been two other types of online sales in recent years, both accelerated by the lockdown of the COVID-19 pandemic that prevented face-to-face meetings. One of these is open online auctions, similar to silent auctions, where bidders can do this over a set period of days. However, live online auctions, such as those held in Newark last week, are conducted in real time. The large number of lots involved, almost 1,200 in this case, made it necessary for the event to run over three nights from January 13th to 15th.
“We’re trying to have weekly wine auctions in Delaware, but there’s a limit right now,” Kapon said.
Many auction houses also have retail wine stores that hold their auctions – a requirement in New York City – and Kapon said Acker has also “examined” a retail facility in Delaware. The company was founded in Delaware in June 2020 and currently has 10 employees.
Acker is known in the wine trade as the least buttoned-down wine auction house and in its catalogs gives imaginative names to the people whose collections are offered for bidding. In the Newark auction, the three basement vendors were identified only as “The Professor”, “The Architect” and “The Golden Phoenix”.
Under state law, Acker cannot ship wine sold from its Newark facility to other states. Buyers who wish to move their wine must therefore collect it in person, make arrangements to transfer it to another location in Delaware, or arrange shipping with a joint freight forwarder outside of the country with the necessary permits and licenses.
Lots offered at auctions can vary from a single bottle to a crate of wine and are often available in larger formats, e.g. B. 1.5 liter magnum. Each lot has a “target price” or estimated sales range and, in the case of last week’s auction, is typically listed for one or several thousand dollars. In addition to paying the bid or the “knockdown price”, the winner must pay an additional buyer’s premium of 24.5% to Acker.
The next auction in Delaware starts on Monday, February 1st at 12:00 noon. Anyone wishing to bid in the auction must first register on the Acker website. www.ackerwines.com.
By Roger Morris
Contributing Author