【英语生活】在线竞买葡萄酒

As Hong Kong's glitzy hotels play host to ever more wine auctions, with furious paddle-waving and Asian bidders showered with samples of expensive bottles, a new battle for sales is taking place online.

Anonymous bidders, identified by screen names like 'LAFITE4EVER' (referring to Asia's favorite, Château Lafite-Rothschild) are buying from the near-constant Internet-only sales offered by the likes of Acker Merrall & Condit, America's oldest wine shop, and California-based Spectrum Wine Auctions.

Compared with traditional sales events, Internet auctions typically offer smaller units of sale (a single bottle, for example, rather than a case) and less-expensive wines. That means online bidders are unlikely to be the trade buyers and investors that crowd live sales.

'It's the drinking man's auction, and it's a great way to get educated,' said John Kapon, president of New York-based Acker, which runs monthly online-only sales. 'There's still a lot of overlap between the Internet and live, but the Internet sales allow us to offer items we can't offer in the live auctions.'

Spectrum runs online-only sales every two weeks, with bottles sold for as little as $1 and as much as $10,000 for a case of Bordeaux's Château Latour. Still, that price pales in comparison with live-auction hauls like the case of Lafite 1982 sold for $77,675 at Spectrum's wine auction last month in Hong Kong.

For those unable to attend live sales in Hong Kong or elsewhere, most other houses offer real-time online bidding during the auctions, sometimes with streaming video of the auctioneer. Online-only sales, however, allow bidders to buy between the live sales.

'We have a continuous flow of wine always online,' said Spectrum President Jason Boland, who noted that Spectrum's last online auction garnered 5,000 bids for around 2,230 lots offered.

Spectrum and Acker both said it's faster to send wine to online buyers than the winners of live sales because of easier logistics. Spectrum plans to launch an application for Apple's iPhone by the end of the summer so people can bid while away from their computers, and Acker expects to overhaul its website later this year to accommodate increasing demand.

Live sales aren't going away any time soon. Acker plans to raise a record $10 million from the Internet this year, yet a single live sale can exceed that. Spectrum said Internet sales are growing fast but account for only 5% of its business so far.

Jake Lee

European Pressphoto Agency传统的葡萄酒拍卖活动在香港和亚洲其他地区依然很流行，但网上拍卖的活动也在日渐兴起。
香港的高档酒店推出了越来越多的葡萄酒拍卖会，在这些拍卖会现场上，亚洲竞标者在频频举牌之余，还能见识到各种昂贵的瓶装酒。与此同时，一场新的销售战正在网上展开。

一些拥有诸如“LAFITE4EVER”（指的是深受亚洲人欢迎的拉菲-罗斯柴尔德酒庄（Chateau Lafite-Rothschild））网名的匿名竞标者正通过美国历史最悠久的葡萄酒商Acker Merrall & Condit和加州Spectrum Wine Auctions等公司提供的几乎持续不断的网上拍卖会购买葡萄酒。

和传统的拍卖活动相比，网上拍卖的销售量一般很小（例如，通常是论瓶卖，而不是论箱），拍卖对象往往是价格不甚高的葡萄酒。这意味着网上竞标的参与者不大可能是挤满现场拍卖会的批发商和投资者。

总部位于纽约的Acker Merrall & Condit 公司的总裁约翰•卡邦（John Kapon）说，“参加网上拍卖会的都是葡萄酒爱好者，这是个增长葡萄酒知识的好办法。在拍品上，网上拍卖和现场拍卖仍旧有一些交集的部分，但是网上拍卖能够让我们出售一些现场拍卖会无法出售的东西。”该公司每月举行一次没有同步现场拍卖的网上拍卖活动。

Spectrum拍卖行每两周举行一次没有同步现场拍卖的网上拍卖活动，其中有售价低至1美元一瓶的酒，也有高达10,000美元一箱的波尔多拉图庄园（Château Latour）的葡萄酒。当然，这个价格和现场拍卖的巨额出价──如上个月Spectrum香港拍卖会上一箱“拉菲（Lafite）1982”拍出的77,675美元──不可同日而语。

针对那些不能参加在香港或其他地方举行的现场拍卖活动的人，大多数其他拍卖行在进行现场拍卖的同时会有同步的网上拍卖，有时候还会有拍卖现场的流式视频。而没有同步现场拍卖的网上拍卖会则便于竞标者在现场拍卖会闭会期间购买。

Spectrum总裁贾森•博兰（Jason Boland）说，“我们的网上拍卖活动一直在持续供货。”据博兰称，在Spectrum上次的网上拍卖活动中，约2,230项拍品收到了5,000次报价。

Spectrum和Acker都说，由于便捷的物流条件，针对网上顾客的送货速度往往要快于针对现场拍卖会顾客的送货速度。Spectrum打算在今年夏末之前推出一种针对苹果iPhone的应用软件，让人们不用电脑也能参加网上竞买。Acker希望今年晚些时候对公司网站进行重大调整，以满足不断增长的网上竞标需求。

现场拍卖会是不可能很快被取消的。 Acker预计今年能从网上拍卖活动中获得创纪录的1,000万美元的收入。这个数字虽然听起来很大，但一次现场拍卖获得的收入就有可能超过这个数字。Spectrum表示，虽然该公司的网上拍卖发展迅速，但这部分收入目前仅为其现场拍卖收入的5%。

Jake Lee

（本文版权归道琼斯公司所有，未经许可不得翻译或转载。）