The Star Talks To: Bill Sokolin, Wine Broker And Seer

Prod Bill Sokolin for memories of his many years as one of the world's top wine brokers, and you'll get the story of the night he broke the world's most expensive bottle of wine.

"It was midnight, April 25, 1989. My birthday," Mr. Sokolin recalled with the clarity of someone reliving a harrowing event.

The wine dealer had brought a bottle of 1787 Chateau Margaux, once owned by Thomas Jefferson, to a dinner at a posh Manhattan hotel. As he placed the bottle, valued at about $200,000, on a serving table, it made a faint noise - piiiinng!

"It sounded like a submarine's sonar in the distance."

It Wasn't Coffee

Back at his own table, Mr. Sokolin discovered a wet spot on his trousers leg. It wasn't coffee.

Only about six ounces remained of the bottle's precious contents when he got up the courage to go and look. The rest had dripped through two tiny cracks.

"It was horrifying. I couldn't believe it."

Almost seven years later, Mr. Sokolin still has the bottle, and the wine is still in his freezer. Aided by the extensive media coverage that followed the Margaux mishap, the bottle itself has climbed in value to some $880,000.

Such is the wine business.

Lenz Chardonnay

He was recounting the story on Friday, standing by the barrels at the Lenz winery in Cutchogue, where he had come to sample the newly bottled '94 Chardonnay. Though Mr. Sokolin's Southampton business carries wines that sell for up to $25,000 a case, the wine broker was enthralled by Lenz's last Chardonnay vintage.

He declared that the North Fork winery was "making some of the best white wine in the world." The price? Twenty dollars a bottle.

Mr. Sokolin, excited by his earlier find, sold 900 cases of Lenz's '93 wines in three months. After tasting this year's vintage, he called it "phenomenal."

"A little thin in front, but the length is incredible!"

"I'd buy the whole thing right now," Mr. Sokolin told Lenz's winemaker, Chris Frye, and its marketing director, Tom Morgan. ". . . I've got a guy down in Florida who wants it as soon as you get the new vintage."

No Ordinary Wine Shop

Mr. Sokolin may not be a wine reviewer, but his taste and investment sense are well trusted by his network of collectors.

"He's got a fax machine running into the homes of the wine cognoscenti of the world," said Mr. Morgan. Indeed, said Mr. Sokolin, the store's fax list contains about 2,000 names, many of them well known.

Walking into D. Sokolin and Co. Wine Merchants on North Sea Road in Southampton, one realizes this is no ordinary wine shop.

There are a few handsome shelves with some handsome-looking bottles of wine. But the space more closely resembles a real estate brokerage, with a row of desks manned by brokers who, on a good day, can move $50,000 or more in wine to customers here and abroad.

Connoisseur Clientele

Mr. Sokolin and his son David, also a wine broker, decided nine months ago to relocate the business from New York City. (Ironically, the location they chose - an unassuming brick storefront - used to be a discount liquor store.)

It is 35 years since Mr. Sokolin took over his ailing father's liquor store in New York. (He played on a Brooklyn Dodgers farm team before that, and also sold helicopters, but that was in another life.)

"There's maybe a dozen stores that do what we do in the world," he said, settling into his desk chair. The business caters to a clientele of connoisseurs, collectors, and shrewd investors, all of them aware of wine's place on the investment block.

"The investment-quality wines keep rising," said the broker. The market "has been going up since '75 and '76, and it's been going up at a rapid, rapid rate."

Investment Grade

He has stocked a high-priced wine cellar for the Revlon chief Ronald Perelman, invested $5 million in wines for the late Time-Warner chief Steven Ross, been sued by an Iranian prince, and exchanged three cases of Petrus for a car with a Ford Motors C.E.O.

"Almost everyone is vying for a limited amount of wine," Mr. Sokolin said, adding that while more and more investors are entering the game, only 30 or 35 true "investment grade" wines are produced in the world. More than half, he said, hail from the Bordeaux region of France.

Bordeaux wines represent just a tiny percentage of the total wine market, said the broker. Labels like Lafite-Rothschild, Chateaux Margaux, Petrus, and Latour are like blue-chip stocks.

Buying Time

A case of 1990 Lafite-Rothschild now fetches $5,000, already up 50 percent over last year. A case of 1961 Petrus, if you can find one, may go for $50,000.

What makes these wines investment commodities? It's not just taste.

"The essence of it is, when you buy expensive wine, you're buying time," Mr. Sokolin explained. The majority of wines on the market are "young," meaning they are ready to drink at bottling. Many of them do not age with grace. The ones that do - the ones that promise to mature into something wonderful, years down the road - become more valuable.

Add a historically great vintage like 1990 or 1945 and a label with a reputation for greatness, and you've got an investment-grade wine.

Supply And Demand

The touch of a reviewer's wand - four top wine reviewers wield tremendous influence in the business - can also help propel a young wine into the investment realm.

"You can't just buy on taste," warned Mr. Sokolin. "You have to buy on history, and history of excellence - pedigree."

Of course, investors also benefit from an always-dwindling supply of rare wines. People do uncork a bottle now and then.

"You're also paying for a piece of history," observed the wine broker. After 100 years in the bottle, even the most refined wine can revert to its basic roots - fermented grapes.

The famed 1787 Jefferson wine, for example. "It was awful," said Mr. Sokolin.

He remembers once buying 200 elderly bottles of first-growth wines from top Bordeaux chateaus. He opened the wines, vintage 1865 to 1900, at various tastings and dinner parties. "They were lousy."

Bordeaux's Best

But there was one among the bunch that was ageless - an 1870 Lafite-Rothschild. "It was the best wine I ever tasted. It made my ears tingle. My toes were tingling."

In 1986, Mr. Sokolin compiled his predictions of wines to watch in a book called "Liquid Assets." Wine values have soared in the past decade, and most of his forecasts have come to fruition.

"I literally have made hundreds of millions of dollars for people," he said.

Whither Prices?

Robert Shoemaker, an official of the investment banking house Bear Sterns, wrote to Mr. Sokolin recently to "congratulate you on your prescience. Virtually all your predicted years came true, with a vengeance. You most certainly made a lot of people happy."

Mr. Sokolin likes the last part. "Wine should be more about fun than money," he remarked.

The sky-high prices amaze even the veteran broker, although he predicts a fall in coming years. With so many eager new players in the game, he said, many of them seeking prestige rather than a sound investment, prices may already be too high for those who know better.

That hasn't stopped Mr. Sokolin from planning a new book, "Hidden Assets," offering tips on what to buy in the coming years.

Long Island Wines

Mr. Sokolin is happy to have relocated his business to the Hamptons. He exudes confidence over his son's abilities and praises his employees as well.

Though they still consider Manhattan their permanent residence, he and his wife, Gloria, have been renting a house in Water Mill for the past nine months. Appropriately, it overlooks Duck Walk Vineyards.

The broker's eyes are on Long Island wines at the moment, and it's not just about Lenz. With soil and climate much like the Bordeaux region, and the growing expertise, Mr. Sokolin said, "This area has the potential for being the best of the best."

That would suit him just fine.