Wines of Enoteca Pinchiorri up for auction: 2,500 bottles from a "legendary cellar"

The wines of the Enoteca Pinchiorri to be auctioned

The reference date is September 12, when 2,500 bottles from one of the most famous wine cellars in Italy will be auctioned by Zachys. A first for the most important American auction house specializing in wine, which on this special occasion will debut with a sale in Europe. After all, the occasion is such as to arouse the interest of an audience of collectors and wine enthusiasts who certainly will flood with offers. The wines in question, in fact, are the ones from which Giorgio Pinchiorri, owner of the Florentine Enoteca, chose to give up after a painful, but reasoned decision, for a discussion of image, and not for issues related to alleged difficulties caused by the emergency health at the well-known restaurant run together with Annie Feolde, which houses a cellar of over 60,000 fine labels, collected in over fifty years. In fact, Pinchiorri himself took it upn himself to deny the budget difficulties caused by Covid, emphasizing how the contact with the auction house precedes the explosion of the pandemic. A different situation, therefore, compared to the auction dedicated a few weeks ago to most of the wines stored in the cellar of the Del Posto restaurant in New York, beaten by the will of Joe Bastianich, struggling with the problems caused to his dining group by the lockdown and restrictions still in force in the United States. The catalogue of the auction, which will be held in London in a single day, has 864 lots - for a total of 2,500 bottles - and has a total base value of 2 million euros.

The history of Pinchiorri. Cellar and restaurant

The announcement is accompanied by the words of Giorgio Pinchiorri, who introduces the catalog, underlining the emotional value of this separation: "Before putting my bottles in Zachys' crates and seeing them come out of my cellar, I kissed them one by one and cried, both with my eyes and with my heart,” said the founder of what, in 1972, began as Enoteca Nazionale, a wine shop and tasting room selling Tuscan cheeses and charcuterie. The restaurant - the history of which we recently retraced in a report dedicated to Annie Feolde and the brigade of Enoteca Pinchiorri, in the Gambero Rosso monthly issue - was born in 1979, with the arrival of the French cook. And in the Eighties, in conjunction with the consolidation of the gourmet approach that brought home the first important awards, including a Wine Spectator award for the cellar (1984).

The auction of the legendary cellar

Among the most valuable lots protagonists of the auction, are two magnums of Vosne-Romanée Cros-Parantoux Reserve Henri Jayer 1999 (starting price £60,000 - £100,000) and two bottles of Romanée-Conti Domaine de la Romanée-Conti 1990 (£24,000 - £32,000), an expression of the excellence of Burgundy viticulture. From Bordeaux, on the other hand, six bottles of Pétrus 1961 (£30,000 - £44,000) and nine of Mouton Rothschild 2000 (£10,000 - £15,000), without forgetting the Champagne region, with two magnums of Krug Clos du Mesnil 1996 (£6,500 - £10,000). As far as Italy, wines range from Barolo Monfortino Riserva Giacomo Conterno 1978 (£2,600 - £3,800) to Super Tuscans. But there are also numerous rare bottles for connoisseurs, in a collection that combines large wineries with small independent producers, personally visited by Pinchiorri himself over time, from big names to lesser known, but specia, winemakers.

The complete auction catalogue