Offline at Sotheby's

I returned to the Sotheby's auction again today, choosing to arrive around lunch time as there was nothing I wanted early on.  The room was full as expected, but the atmosphere was a little different today.

Yesterday's big online bidder was noticeably absent today.  Action returned to the room but there were still few bargains to be had.  I ended up picking up some old red Burgundy which I had tasted a few days ago, hoping that they'd turn out better than the bottle I tried.  Most of my friends were unable to pick up anything at what we thought were "reasonable" prices.

Auctioneers these days have a tough job as they try to monitor bidders in the room, telephone/absentee bidders as well as the computer monitor for incoming online bids.  We again had instances where bidders and auctioneer weren't in sync and the bidders thought they were buying something else - which happened to my friend yesterday.  There was also an instance where the auctioneer turned his head towards his colleague with a telephone bid on the side, and proceeded to ignore my neighbor seated in the center of the room for more than 20 seconds.  I think the lady took it pretty well...

Lunch today was again very good, with a good selection of hot dishes I enjoyed.  Can't find fault with the food at the Mandarin Oriental...

We were also served the following wines:

2000 Gruaud-Larose - smoky, meaty, Asian five-spice (五香), soy sauce with black fruits.  Full-bodied and lovely.

2000 Ducru-Beaucaillou - green peppers, lead pencil and smoke. 

1996 Montrose - first pour was really grassy, sweet, smoked duck, vegetal and brett.  For a second I thought it might have been lightly corked.  Very concentrated with lots of tannin here.  Second pour from a different bottle had no vegetal notes, but was amazingly tannic for a wine this age.