Auctions: The professionals

Christie’s is the oldest established wine auctioneer. Wine was a prominent feature in James Christie’s first sale on 5 December 1766, which, along with household furniture, jewellery, and firearms, included the sale of ‘a large quantity of Madeira and high Flavour’d Claret, late the Property of Noble Personage (Deceas’d)’. Three years later, on 7 and 8 September 1769, James Christie held his first sale entirely devoted to wine, a collection of ‘Old Hock, Rich Burgundy, Calcavella [Portugal’s carcavelos], Malaga and tent, the property of Captain Fletcher from the West Indies’.