Christie's Auction Floor Experience

How to Complete

5 steps curated by Wine Memories

1. ⛰️ 1

   Walk Into the Room Where £25,000 Bottles Wait

   adventure Free

   📍 WHERE: Christie's, 8 King Street, St James's, London SW1Y 6QT. Walk through the entrance and ask for the wine pre-sale exhibition — it's open to the public free of charge, typically in the two to three days before the auction.

   💡 WHAT: The bottles you're looking at are not displayed behind glass like museum pieces — they're right there, in their wooden cases and silk-lined boxes, with printed catalogue cards showing their estimates. That magnum of Château Latour 1961 with a £20,000-£25,000 estimate? It's from the Avery family cellar — three generations of Bristol wine merchants who amassed one of Britain's great private collections. The magnum eventually hammered at £25,000. Pick up the catalogue (free at the desk) and read the provenance notes for each lot.

   🎯 HOW: No booking required. Arrive during preview hours (check christies.com for exact times — typically 10am-5pm). Tell reception you're here for the wine sale viewing. A specialist will often be present and welcomes questions — these are the people who spent months authenticating provenance.

   🔄 BACKUP: If the preview has ended, Christie's holds wine auctions roughly four times a year (late February/March, June, September, December). Browse upcoming sales at christies.com/calendar — the online catalogues are free and show every lot with estimate, provenance, and condition notes.

   🍷 Log Memory
2. ⛰️ 2

   Claim Your Paddle — Even If You Never Raise It

   adventure Free

   📍 WHERE: Christie's registration desk, ground floor, 8 King Street.

   💡 WHAT: This is the move nobody tells first-timers about. Registering as a bidder is completely free and transforms the experience. You're no longer a spectator — you're a participant. The process takes 5 minutes: create an account at christies.com, register for the specific wine sale, provide ID and payment details. Arrive at the saleroom, collect your paddle (a numbered card). The moment the auctioneer nods at your paddle, a lot worth tens of thousands of pounds is yours. That's power. Of course you don't have to bid — but holding the paddle changes your relationship with every lot.

   🎯 HOW: Register online in advance at christies.com before the auction date. Bring your passport and the card you registered with. The desk opens 30 minutes before the auction starts. Alternatively, walk in as a spectator (no registration required) — the experience is still extraordinary, just without the paddle.

   🔄 BACKUP: Can't attend in person? Christie's Live lets you bid in real time from anywhere — 81% of all Christie's bids in 2024 came via this platform. But the room is incomparable.

   🍷 Log Memory
3. 📜 3

   Watch a Telephone Bidder Win Something Worth More Than a Car

   history Free

   📍 WHERE: The Christie's saleroom, 8 King Street. Take a seat — the room holds around 100 people. The telephone bidders line the walls: Christie's specialists, each quietly relaying bids from anonymous collectors in Hong Kong, New York, Geneva.

   💡 WHAT: This room has been doing this since 1966, when a man named Michael Broadbent MW walked in with a business plan and convinced Christie's to create the world's first dedicated wine auction department at a major auction house. Before Broadbent, nobody did this. He spent the next 32 years here, filling 140 notebooks with 90,000 tasting notes, turning Christie's into the global benchmark for how fine wine gets priced. He died in 2020 at 92. The moment the auctioneer's gavel drops — one sharp crack — and announces 'sold at £37,500 for the Petrus 1990 in original wooden case' — Broadbent's legacy is audible in that sound.

   🎯 HOW: Sit anywhere. The auction catalogue (collected at preview or from the desk) lists lots in order, so you can follow along. Watch for: the phone bidders raising a hand when their client is still in; the auctioneer reading the room, slowing down when two bidders are locked in; the moment the gavel falls and the room exhales.

   🔄 BACKUP: If the big live sale isn't available, Christie's online-only auctions run year-round and can be watched live via Christie's Live on their website — the bidding interface shows real-time activity.

   🍷 Log Memory
4. 🍷 4

   Decode the Number: What That Lot Actually Cost

   wine Free

   📍 WHERE: Anywhere with the Christie's catalogue in hand — in the room during a break, or afterwards at a nearby café.

   💡 WHAT: Here's what nobody explains. When the auctioneer says 'sold at £25,000,' that is NOT the final price. Christie's adds a 25% buyer's premium on top of the hammer price. So that magnum of Château Latour 1961 that hammered at £25,000? The buyer actually paid £31,250. And a bottle of 1945 Romanée-Conti that hammered at £450,000 at Sotheby's? $558,000 all-in (the world record, set in 2018 — one of only 600 bottles ever made from a vintage where the vines were immediately uprooted afterwards). The premium is how the auction house makes its margin. This knowledge changes how you read every estimate in the catalogue: the 'low estimate' is the hammer price you're targeting, but your actual budget needs to be 25% higher.

   🎯 HOW: Take the catalogue. Find any lot. Multiply the hammer estimate by 1.25. That's your real number. Now look at the estimates for the most expensive lots in the sale — and do that math.

   🔄 BACKUP: Christie's online results (past sales) are searchable at christies.com — you can see exactly what every lot achieved, with premium included, going back years.

   🍷 Log Memory
5. 🍷 5

   Buy the Same Wine at the World's Oldest Wine Shop — 90 Seconds Away

   wine $

   📍 WHERE: Berry Bros. & Rudd, 3 St James's Street, London SW1A 1EG. From Christie's, turn left out of the front door, walk to the end of King Street, and turn right onto St James's Street. The shop is 90 seconds away. It has been on this corner since 1698.

   💡 WHAT: Berry Bros. & Rudd is Britain's oldest wine merchant — 328 years on the same premises. They are a Royal Warrant holder (King Charles III). The shop itself is unchanged: wooden floors, barrels used as counters, a ledger that once recorded the weights of customers including Lord Byron and the Aga Khan (the shop used a large set of scales for this). The staff know the wines that just sold at Christie's — they often sell similar bottles at retail. After watching a magnum of Château Latour 1961 hammer at £25,000, walk in and ask what they have from Latour. You can leave with a bottle of a great Latour vintage for £150-£500 — the same house, a different year.

   🎯 HOW: Open Monday-Friday 10am-6pm, Saturday 10am-5pm. No booking needed. Walk in, tell them what you watched sell at Christie's, and ask what they'd recommend in a similar style that's actually drinkable. They'll guide you.

   🔄 BACKUP: If Berry Bros. is closed, Jermyn Street (one block north) has multiple excellent wine shops. Alternatively, Fortnum & Mason on Piccadilly (5-minute walk) has a strong fine wine section with bottles from the same châteaux you just watched sell.

   🍷 Log Memory

Insider Tips

• ✦

  Register as bidder for pre-auction tastings of key lots

• ✦

  Spectating is free - just register in advance

• ✦

  Christie's King Street and Sotheby's New Bond Street are main venues

• ✦

  2025 highlights: Bouchard Père cellars (£2.4M), Avery treasures

• ✦

  Online auctions more accessible - watch from home