How to Buy Wine at Auction: The Complete Guide
Updated
Almost everything that decides whether an auction lot was a good buy happens before the hammer falls: the registration deadline you missed, the fill level you skipped, the bond box you did not tick, and the maximum you never actually worked out.
Here is how to buy wine at auction in six steps. Register at least 48 hours before the sale. Christie's asks new bidders, and returning bidders who have not bought in two years, for photo identification and proof of current address. It may also ask for a financial reference or a deposit, according to Christie's London wine conditions. Read the lot description and the fill level before you look at the estimate, because condition carries a price and the estimate is not a promise. Work out your maximum as a delivered number, not a hammer number: wine premiums run 17% to 25%, and UK VAT of 20% falls on the premium on top. Decide in bond or duty paid before the sale, because Christie's invoices you duty paid unless you ask in writing beforehand. Bid by paddle, telephone, written bid or online. Then pay inside the house's window: seven calendar days at Christie's London, fourteen at Zachys.
How do you register to bid, and how late can you leave it?
Forty-eight hours at Christie's, and that deadline sits in the conditions of sale rather than being a courtesy. Christie's states in its London wine conditions dated 23 April 2026 that if this is your first time bidding, "or you are a returning bidder who has not bought anything from any of our salerooms within the last two years you must register at least 48 hours before an auction to give us enough time to process and approve your registration."
What you hand over depends on who is bidding. Individuals need "Photo identification (driving licence, national identity card or passport) and, if not shown on the ID document, proof of your current address". Corporate clients need a Certificate of Incorporation "together with documentary proof of directors and beneficial owners". Christie's then adds the line most first-time bidders miss: "We may also ask you to give us a financial reference and/or a deposit as a condition of allowing you to bid."
The other houses gate the same way with different paperwork. Zachys says new bidders may need a government photo ID, a valid credit card, a bank reference or proof of funds, and business documents for a company account. It sets the age floor at 21 in the United States and 18 in Hong Kong. WineBid states that it pre-authorises your card the first time you bid, and voids the pre-authorisation when the auction closes. iDealwine says it takes banking details and proof of identity at sign-up, and restricts bidding to those 18 or over.
Leaving registration late is not a small problem. Christie's reserves the right to refuse you if its anti-money-laundering checks are not satisfied, "and if you make a successful bid, we may cancel the contract for sale between you and the seller."
Three more clocks are worth putting in your calendar. To bid in the room you must register for a numbered paddle "at least 30 minutes before the auction". A request to bid by telephone "must be made no later than 24 hours prior to the auction". And Christie's must receive a written bid "at least 24 hours before the auction". Book the phone line the day before, not on the morning.
What do the catalogue abbreviations actually tell you?
They tell you three priced things: how full the bottle is, what packaging it came in, and whose tax it is. Learn the shorthand and a lot description stops being decoration.
Sotheby's lists the fill abbreviations in its buying glossary: u. for ullage, then bn. bottom neck, vts. very top shoulder, ts. top shoulder, hs. high shoulder and ms. mid shoulder, with the worked example "(u. 3hs) means 3 bottles ullaged to high shoulder". For Burgundy, German and other sloping-neck bottles, the drop appears in centimetres from the base of the cork, according to Sotheby's. Two silences in the same glossary matter as much as the marks: "Sotheby's does not indicate levels under 3 cm in the necks of the bottles inspected", and "Sotheby's does not comment on either back labels or importer labels". Our ullage levels guide sets each band against the age at which it stops being normal.
Sotheby's lists the packing abbreviations in the same glossary: owc original wooden case, oc original carton, opc original presentation case, nop no original packaging, sc Sotheby's carton. A parcel is "a group of lots of the same type and quantity of wine", and a fully branded cork "indicates the producer, vineyard and vintage are legible on the cork".
Christie's marks tax and interest with symbols rather than letters:
| Symbol | What it means in a Christie's wine sale |
|---|---|
| ‡ | The lot is in bond, and you can take it in bond or duty paid. Everything else is bid "at duty-paid prices per lot" |
| • | Lot offered without reserve |
| ■ | Transferred to an offsite storage facility. In London, usually collectable from 12pm on the second business day after the auction |
| ° | Christie's has given a minimum price guarantee and has a direct financial interest in the lot |
| °♦ | Same guarantee, but financed through a third party who has placed an irrevocable written bid |
| ¤ | A party with an interest in the lot, who may know the reserve, may be bidding |
Two catalogue conventions round it off. "All wines are Château-bottled unless stated otherwise", and Bordeaux classifications printed in the text "are for identification purposes only and are based on the official 1855 classification of the Médoc and other standard sources". A cru classé line in a lot title is a label, not a grading of that bottle.
How do you set a maximum bid you will not regret?
Start from what the case is worth to you delivered, then work backwards through the fee stack to the hammer that produces it. Bidding to a round hammer number and meeting the invoice afterwards is the single most common way to overpay.
The premium is the biggest step. Christie's states a 25% premium on wine, spirits and cigars in its London conditions. Sotheby's charges 24% on all hammer prices for global wines and spirits, plus a 1% overhead premium. Bonhams charges 24% on wine and whisky in the UK. Zachys charges 25%, iDealwine 21.5% excluding French VAT, and WineBid 17%. In the UK, VAT at the standard 20% rate then falls on the premium, according to GOV.UK. Bonhams states it adds "to the buyer’s premium and is", and Christie's says that whether you buy in bond or duty paid, VAT "will be added to the buyer's premium and will be shown separately on our invoice". The house-by-house premium comparison has the full table.
Do not let the estimate anchor you. Christie's states plainly that estimates "do not include the buyer's premium or any applicable taxes", and that nobody "may rely on any estimates as a prediction or guarantee of the actual selling price of a lot".
Then understand where the floor is. Unless a lot shows the no-reserve symbol, it carries a reserve, and "the reserve cannot be more than the lot's low estimate, unless the lot is subject to a third party guarantee and the irrevocable bid exceeds the printed low estimate". Below that floor the auctioneer may, at their sole option, bid on behalf of the seller... up to but not including the amount of the reserve, without identifying those as seller bids. On a no-reserve lot the auctioneer "will generally decide to open the bidding at 50% of the low estimate", and Christie's executes a written bid on such a lot "at around 50% of the low estimate or, if lower, the amount of your bid".
Increments differ by venue, and it changes how you write a maximum. Christie's leaves them to the auctioneer, who "will decide at their sole option where the bidding should start and the bid increments". The online houses publish ladders: WineBid steps by $50 between $500 and $999 and by $500 above $5,000; Zachys steps by $200 between $2,000 and $5,000 and by $2,000 above $20,000. Set a maximum that sits on a rung rather than between two.
Online proxy bidding rewards discipline. WineBid takes your maximum rather than your next bid and bids for you until it hits that number, and warns that on multi-bottle lots "you can't win bottles within the same lot at different amounts". It also states that "bids cannot be canceled and all sales are final".
Should you buy in bond or duty paid?
In bond if you are holding the wine or exporting it. Duty paid if you are going to drink it in the UK soon. And you have to say which before the sale, not after.
Christie's puts the trap in one sentence: "To buy the lots in bond, please contact us in writing prior to the sale. Buyers who do not do so will be invoiced duty paid." Bidding runs "at duty-paid prices per lot" unless the lot carries the ‡ symbol.
Buying in bond means "no excise duty or clearance VAT will be charged on the hammer price, but VAT will be charged on the buyer's premium". You then arrange collection "by a shipper with a bond movement guarantee or by a warehouse with a customs bond/suspense regime". The duty does not vanish, it waits: "if you take your purchases out of bond at a future date excise duty and clearance charges will become payable."
The reason this matters for anyone buying to hold is liquidity. HMRC states in Excise Notice 197 that "owners of duty-suspended excise goods held in a warehouse may sell their goods in duty suspension at any time." A case that never left bond can change hands again without anyone paying duty, which is why in-bond stock is the standard currency of the secondary market.
Duty paid adds two lines. UK alcohol duty on wine between 8.5% and 22% ABV is £30.62 per litre of pure alcohol under the rates in force from 1 February 2026, according to GOV.UK. A twelve-bottle case of 75cl wine at 13% ABV contains 1.17 litres of pure alcohol, so the duty is £35.83 for the case. Clearance VAT at 20% then falls on the duty-inclusive hammer price.
Exporting has its own clock. Christie's refunds VAT to a non-UK buyer only on "immediate proof of correct export out of the UK within the required time frame of 90 days from the date of sale", charges "a processing fee of £35.00 per invoice to check shipping/export documents" and waives that fee if you appoint its shipping department. Private buyers who carry lots out of the UK by hand "will now be charged VAT at the applicable rate and will not be able to claim a VAT refund".
Run the whole stack for your own lot in the landed-cost calculator, which shows the source against each line, or read the line-by-line breakdown of a £1,000 hammer.
How do you tell a safe lot from a risky one?
Read what the house declines to warrant, not what it says about the wine. That is where the house prices the risk.
Christie's sells lots "'as is', in the condition they are in at the time of the sale, without any representation or warranty or assumption of liability of any kind as to condition", and treats catalogue statements about a lot's "nature or condition, artist, period, materials, approximate dimensions or provenance" as "our opinion and not to be relied upon as a statement of fact". On old wine it goes further: "buyers of old wines must make appropriate allowances for natural variations of ullages, conditions of cases, labels, corks and wine. No returns will be accepted."
So the return windows are narrow and they differ:
| House | If you think the bottle is wrong |
|---|---|
| Christie's (London wine) | Written notice within 21 days of the auction, and the lot back in Christie's possession in the same condition within 14 days of that notice |
| Zachys | Return within 90 calendar days of delivery on "reasonable evidence" of inauthenticity, with Zachys' approval |
| iDealwine | Wines are guaranteed "authentic and will conform to their published descriptions", but levels, corks, capsules and labels are "only indicative" |
| WineBid | Nothing. All purchases are made 'as is.' We do not offer refunds or exchanges. |
Provenance is the other half of the question, and it is the half with a criminal record. WineBid describes it plainly: "the ownership history of a particular wine is called the provenance of the wine." The US Attorney for the Southern District of New York states in an announcement of 7 August 2014 that Rudy Kurniawan had been sentenced to 10 years for a scheme that ran "from 2004 through 2012", in which he "mixed and blended lower-priced wines so that they would mimic the taste and character of rare and far more expensive wines", bottled them and sold them "at auctions and in direct sales to wealthy wine collectors". His sentence included forfeiture of $20 million and restitution of $28,405,502.50. The wines he faked were the deepest names in Burgundy and Bordeaux, which is precisely why a lot of Romanée-Conti or Pétrus with a thin ownership history deserves a discount rather than a premium.
The practical checklist before you bid: an unbroken chain of ownership, a named cellar or an ex-château release, original packaging noted in the abbreviations, a fill level normal for the age, and a house that inspected the bottle rather than one that reproduced the consignor's description.
What happens after the hammer falls?
You owe the money fast, and the risk becomes yours whether or not you have collected. Christie's requires payment "no later than by the end of the 7th calendar day following the date of the auction", and charges interest on late payment "at a rate of 5% a year above the UK Lloyds Bank base rate".
| House | Payment due | Collection and storage |
|---|---|---|
| Christie's (London wine) | End of the 7th calendar day after the auction | Wines lie at Crozier West Drayton. Storage charges start if the lot is not collected by the end of the 90th day |
| Zachys | 4.30pm on the 14th calendar day after a live sale, the 7th after an internet sale. Zachys may cancel unpaid invoices on the 31st day | Collect within 14 days or the wine transfers to a storage account at your expense |
| WineBid | Your invoice total is billed to the card on file when the auction closes | Two months free storage on the base tier, four on Collector, six on Pro |
| iDealwine | On order confirmation. Interest runs from day 7, automatic direct debit from day 15 | Lots cannot be delivered until payment is received in full |
Two Christie's clauses catch people out. Ownership "will not pass to you until we have received full and clear payment of the purchase price", but risk transfers to you at the earlier of collection or "the end of the 30th day following the date of the auction". For those three weeks in between, the wine is at your risk and not yet yours.
Shipping wine is not the same as shipping a painting. Christie's states it "is unable to arrange shipping for wine purchases, but can provide you with a contact for a preferred third-party shipper", and that "not less than an entire lot can be collected or delivered to one address". WineBid is blunter: "purchases are never shipped automatically." Zachys adds a 1% Shipping Protection Fee on the hammer plus premium that applies "unless explicitly declined", and delays shipments "during times of extreme high or low temperatures", which is a feature rather than a fault.
US buyers have a tax to plan for at the door. According to Christie's buying guide, the house collects New York City sales tax on all wine released in New York, "to you, the buyer, or to your agent or third-party shipper", before it releases the lot, whatever the final destination.
Which auction house should you buy from?
The one where the wine you want appears often enough to have a price rather than a story. Premium spread across the six houses above is eight percentage points, and a thin sale can burn that in one competitive lot.
The houses publish the premium before the bidding, so bidders price it in. A low-premium venue with three interested buyers can clear higher all-in than a high-premium venue with thirty. The only way to settle it is to compare what the same wine, vintage and format actually realised at each venue, with the premium already applied.
Frequency is also a buying signal in its own right. A wine that comes up forty times a year has a price you can trust; one that comes up twice a year has an opinion. The fine wine market index tracks the liquid end of that distribution, and the Burgundy producer atlas is the fastest way to work out which neighbouring grower makes the same wine without the auction-room tax on the name.
Bid to the number you actually pay
The discipline that saves the most money is the least glamorous one: decide what the case is worth to you on your doorstep, then divide back through premium, VAT, duty and carriage to find the hammer you can afford. Do that and you will bid less, buy better, and never again discover the fee stack on the invoice.
Our landed-cost calculator does that arithmetic in both directions. Enter a hammer and it shows every line to your door with the source against each one; enter the delivered price you are willing to pay and it gives you the maximum bid that lands there, by house, in bond or duty paid.
If the case in question is one you already own, the drink-now list tells you whether the clock says open it or hold it. If you are shopping a vintage rather than a single wine, open Bordeaux 2015 in a second tab while the lots come up.