Los Gatos: Michelin-starred Manresa’s wine collection going up on the auction block

David Kinch’s three-Michelin-starred Manresa may have closed, but oenophiles now have a chance to purchase fine and rare wines from the stellar collection of the Los Gatos restaurant.

Heritage Auctions of Beverly Hills is presenting the Manresa Cellar auction. Online bidding, already under way, will culminate in a live auction April 21.

“The list was meticulously curated over the course of the 20-year run of the restaurant by chef David Kinch and master sommelier Jim Rollston,” said Ty Methfessel, Consignment Director of Fine & Rare Wines at Heritage, in Wednesday’s announcement. “The restaurant’s two-decade run allowed an accumulation of many vintages of some iconic and rare wines from importers and producers that had long relationships with the restaurant.”

Kinch closed Manresa after a Dec. 31 dinner finale. When he announced his planned departure from his world-famous restaurant — one of only six in California to hold three of the coveted Michelin stars — he said in an email that he wanted “embark on the next phase of his culinary journey, with a renewed focus on (his) more casual local establishments,” including The Bywater in Los Gatos, Mentone in Aptos and Manresa Bread locations.

Heritage Auctions’ website depicts the 233-lot Manresa Cellar, which is part of a larger 767-lot auction. The Los Gatos wines are valued from the hundreds to the thousands. Overall, the collection’s worth is estimated at $227,070 to $298,725, a Heritage representative said.

Values of the Manresa lots and bottles vary widely. For example, the current bid is $360 for a 2006 Scarecrow Cabernet Sauvignon from Napa Valley’s Rutherford that Heritage estimates has a worth of $450 to $550. Robert Parker’s Wine Advocate had called it a “brilliant wine … capable of lasting two-plus decades.”

The most expensive bottle in the collection is an acclaimed chardonnay from France’s Burgundy region. The 2013 Coche Dury Corton Charlemagne is expected to sell for $4,750 or more, Heritage said.

Wine expert Allen Meadows of Burghound swooned over this one in his 2016 review, calling it “breathtakingly good” and awarding it 97 points:

“An incredibly densely fruited nose also only grudgingly offers up notes of stone, tangerine peel, white flowers, green apple and plenty of spice and soft wood nuances. There is an almost painful intensity to the equally concentrated and overtly powerful broad-shouldered flavors that brim with dry extract that simultaneously coats the palate while buffering the extremely firm acid spine on the incredibly long finish,” he said.

“This is a breathtakingly good CC but note well that it will be largely pointless to open one of these rare beauties before it is at least 7 to 8 years of age. As an aside I would add that I was so taken with this wine that I could still taste it the next day. A ‘wow’ wine if there ever was one.”

The most expensive lot is a five-vintage vertical of Raveneau Chablis Montee de Tonnerre. estimated to bring $5,500-plus.

“While it’s difficult to think of dismantling the product of 20 years’ work,” Rollston, wine director since 2014, said in a statement, “the knowledge that wine enthusiasts will be able to experience a bit of Manresa’s conviviality and hospitality when enjoying one of these bottles reminds us, in a small way, of the joy of caring for guests nightly in the dining room for all those years.”

Details: Find the Manresa wines at this Heritage Auctions link, https://wine.ha.com/c/search-results.zx?N=2003+793+794+792+2088+4294939473+4294939421