June 10, 1995, the first wine auction on the Inernet was held !!

I, who love wines and Internet, could not keep in when I knew a wine acution to be held on Internet. Here is my brief report of the auction.

  1. First wine auction on the Inernet is held !
  2. May 25, my wife told me "The newspeper says there will be a wine auction on the Internet". Of course, I grabbed and read
    the article of "the Nihon Keizai Shinbun"

  3. BUT where ?
  4. The newspaper didn't give any information such as URL, etc. I mailed to Wine Mailing list to ask but no answer came. They might not understand what I wrote in English ?! :-)
    Then, I used YAHOO, to search by words "wine" and "auction". Still I couldn't find anything. However, I found NAPA Valley home page, where they have ordinary wine auctions. But no mention about the Internet wine auction.
    Nevertheless I was lucky enough to find on that page about Rutherford Hill Winery , a participant of the acution. I sent Virtula Vinyard page , at the midnight on Friday June 9, 1995.

    Thank you very much to Rutherford Hill Winery

  5. Auction !!
  6. The auction was held on Virtula Vinyard.
    1. On registoration page, I entered my name, address, credit card number and password. Then I got a paddle number. My number was 707.
    2. I reviewed the lot preview page carefully, this time only 8 lots.
    3. Bidding started at midnight on Friday, June 9 PST (California time) and ended on Saturday, June 10 at approximately 7:00 p.m. PST. During this period, there was a link to the bidding page: click this link and enter your name and password to go on.
    4. Click the lots list, and enter the Bidding page. This page shows the current high bid, Bid History and Bid button. If you want to bid, enter your price and click the bid button.
    5. From time to time, check the bidding page and bid. Repeat the procedure. After 7:00 pm, I checked every 10 or 15 minutes. In the end I battled against #429, we were so excited to increase the bid by $100 in a few minutes.
    6. At 8:00 pm, Bidding page disappeared and the auction ended.

  7. I'm the winnerI
    1. A few minutes later, I received the following E-mail:
      ----------------------------------------------
      YUICHI YOSHIDA,
      
      Thank you for bidding in the Online Silent Auction
      sponsored by the Napa Valley Wine Auction and
      Virtual Vineyards.
      
      You are the winner of lot number 560.
      
      
      Saintsbury
      1991 Carneros Pinot Noir,  3L
                   .
                   .
                   .
      

    2. I contacted to the specified shipper by FAX (they don't have an E-mail) several times.

  8. The wine arrived at last !
  9. 11 days after the auction, I received the wine I won. Wine arrived !

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First auction on the Internet

The biggest wine auction in U.S.A.

The biggest charity wine auction, "Napa Valley Wine Auction", introduces an electrical bidding system by using Internet, an international network of personal computers. Anyone can bid California wines from anywhere in the world and the sponsor expects drastic increase of bidders.
The auction will take place on June 10, 1995, Saint Herena, California, and more than 100 local winaries will participate to the event. Eight winaries such as Vichon, Rutherford Hill, Cakebread Cellars will be auctioned off. A display screen will be set in the auction room to display the on-line bidding prices in real time.

Nihon Keizai Shinbun, Evening edition, May 25, 1995

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