The State - News from Dec. 15, 1985

A doctor from Southern California successfully bid $11,000 for an oversize bottle of French Bordeaux wine in a sale billed as the first major auction of wine in San Francisco. The wine, rated near the top of the great red wines of the world, was a 1929 Chateau Mouton-Rothschild Bordeaux that held the world record for a single bottle sale in 1976, also $11,000. The record price paid for a bottle is now $157,500, paid this month for a 1787 Chateau Lafite at a London auction. The San Francisco bidding on a “jeroboam” --a bottle equivalent to six standard bottles--started at $5,000 and increased in increments of $1,000 until it reached the winning bid. Spokeswoman Lauren Howard of Butterfield & Butterfield, the auctioneers, said the buyer wished to remain anonymous.