THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, November 2, 1996 TAG: 9611010061
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E6 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: Larry Maddry
LENGTH: 82 lines
THEY CALL HER ``Comet,'' a fine name for a horse or a train, but rather odd for anyone in the staid business of auctioning wine for one of America's best-known auction houses.
By whatever name, Ursula Hermancinski of Christie's - who will wield the gavel at this afternoon's auction for the Chesapeake Bay Wine Classic at Bayville Farms in Virginia Beach - is on the go with Bordeaux or Pinot Grigio.
Comet Ursula, a monicker bestowed by Wine Spectator magazine, is a witty, animated 35-year-old who can stroke and cajole a crowd of charity bidders like a virtuoso with a violin - working those C-notes into the thousands.
``My auctioneering style is different for charity events,'' she said. ``It's more for entertainment. And more enjoyable. When I'm doing a wine auction at Christie's which is strictly for business I have to keep reining myself in. There, I tell myself not to have fun but to keep things moving.''
(Proceeds from today's auction will benefit WHRO, Hampton Roads' public radio and TV outlet, and establish scholarships for students pursuing careers linked to food and wine. Wine, vacations and dining packages will go under the gavel. Tickets to the auction are sold out.)
Even at non-charity auctions for Christie's, in New York, she has shown a playful side. At those auctions bidders use paddles with numbers on them to make bids and the buyers are much more knowledgeable and eager to start.
Sometimes she finds that the moment she has stepped behind the lectern, buyers have raised their paddles to bid on the first lot of wines.
``When they do that I usually begin the bidding at $10,000 as a joke,'' she said. ``It's such fun to see those upraised paddles fly down to their laps.''
USA Today has called her the most sought-after auctioneer on the benefit circuit. She'll have 22 charity auctions under her belt by the end of the year and has already raised millions for the Napa Valley Wine Auction, the nation's largest.
When I reached her by phone the auctioneer was in Sarasota, Fla., for an auction benefiting children's charities.
A senior wine specialist for Christie's, Hermancinski makes her home in San Francisco. But she has the enviable job of sampling some of the world's best wines - to ensure the integrity of the vintage - before lots go on the block.
From time to time, she is treated to a bottle of rare wine from the lot purchased by a bidder. Not many are as rare as the gift magnum of 1968 Vega-Sicilia Unico. That one, she explained, was the foremost wine vintage of Spain and ``terribly rare.'' The retail price of the bottle is around $800.
Speaking of expensive wines, she had a couple of good stories about Thomas Jefferson wines. ``Unfortunately both are rather sad,'' she said.
Jefferson was our country's most famous wine collector. In 1985 a bottle with his initials scratched upon them came into the hands of Christie's in London by way of one of Europe's great cellars.
The TJ wine - a bottle of 1787 Lafite - created a storm of publicity, and a bidding war ensued at the auction. The bottle was purchased by the Forbes museum in New York for $100,000.
``The Forbes Museum people put the bottle - a red Bordeaux - in the window under a fluorescent light,'' she said. ``It caused the cork in the bottle to shrink, and it fell into the wine, ruining it.''
Couldn't they have strained the wine through panty hose - one of my favorite methods - to remove the cork and particles?
``No,'' she explained. ``The taste fades in wine of that age very quickly, and it has to be drunk immediately.''
A few years later a second bottle of TJ wine surfaced, this time a half-bottle of Chatueaux Margaux. A pair of Americans flew to London on the Concorde to bid on it and paid $100,000 at Christie's. One of the purchasers appeared days later at a gathering of wine aficionados at the Four Seasons restaurant in New York with the wine in his pocket. As he pulled it from his pocket, it fell to the floor and broke, she reported.
Today's auction will be a homecoming of sorts for the auctioneer. She began her charity wine auctioneering at the Chesapeake Bay Wine Classic in 1991.
Hermancinski likes to hang out with a charity crowd before the auction, eating, drinking and talking with as many people as she can. It makes her more at ease when she steps up on the podium - and the audience, too - she confided.
And she likes wine drinkers, generally.
``I`ve been so lucky in my life that of all the wine people I've known, I rarely run across a wine snob or boor,'' she said. ``If I do, it's one person in one hundred.'' ILLUSTRATION: FILE PHOTO
``Comet Ursula'' Hermancinski will work the crowd today.
KEYWORDS: PROFILE by CNB