Doris Duke, circa 1944, christening a ship with a bottle of Champagne.

Doris Duke, dubbed "the world's richest girl" by the tabloid press of the 1920s, lived and entertained on a grand scale. Her everyday wine, for example, was La Mission Haut Brion 1929. On June 4, 1,900 bottles of great and now rare wine Duke never got around to drinking will go on the auction block at Christie's New York, material testimony to a vanished age.

The cellar is estimated in excess of $1 million, and all proceeds will benefit the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation. This pristine consignment contains a host of pre-war rarities -- double magnums of Château Cheval-Blanc 1911 and Château Latour 1918, and vast case-lots of châteaus d'Yquem and La Mission-Haut-Brion 1929 -- all of which have reposed in a temperature-controlled storage facility since acquisition in the late 1930s.

Duke was the only child of financier James Buchanan "Buck" Duke, founder of the American Tobacco Company and Duke Power. He was said to be worth $80 million at the time of his daughter's birth in 1912. She would later inherit $30 million, which she parlayed into a $750 million fortune by the time of her death in 1993. A dedicated philanthropist, collector and patron of the arts, Doris was a woman of considerable passions.

It was Duke's first husband, James H.R. Cromwell -- socialite, sophisticate, and latterly, Ambassador to Canada -- who is credited with creating the spectacular wine collection. Original invoices housed in the Duke archives show that between 1937 and '38, he purchased approximately 6,000 bottles of fine wine and spirits from Paris négociant R. Boyer. They were shipped to Duke Farms in Somerville, N.J., and Shangri-La, another Duke home in Diamond Head, Hawaii.

The most extraordinary aspect of the Duke collection is its depth. An inventory of the Somerville cellar taken in 1938 revealed a staggering 38 cases of Château d'Yquem 1929, 29 cases of Château Climens 1929, 27 cases of Château La Mission-Haut-Brion 1929, 18 cases of Château Latour 1929, and eight cases of DRC Romanée-Conti 1934. These are the kinds of wines which will go on the block in June.

Certain buyers who acquire lots from the collection will find a bit of a break on the final price. The Doris Duke Charitable Foundation (the consignor) holds a State of New York Exempt Organization Certificate, therefore no sales tax will be due on the purchase price of lots in the sale if the lots are collected or delivered in the state of New York.

Until Christie's staff came to remove the Duke Farms' collection, the wines hadn't budged for more than 65 years. Other than an ex-chateau offering, it's hard to imagine much better in terms of provenance. The cellar itself was like entering a time warp, as it contained few vintages younger than 1934.

Stored in a former subterranean meat locker that was refrigerated in the '30s (an adjacent cold storage area housed Ms. Duke's furs along with a stuffed Bengalese tiger), the wines were arranged in simple honeycomb metal racks with the kind of overhead lighting you would expect to find in a pool hall. This was a no-frills storage unit, and it's unlikely that anyone other than the family butler ever set foot in it.

Late last year Christie's inspected the cellar, making tentative cuts, examining capsules, levels and labels. Every bin was examined, bottle by bottle. "The condition is amazing," enthused Christie's Ian Mendelsohn, "Out of the dozens of bottles of La Mission 1929, we only rejected five due to low neck levels." Added Brierley, "I've never seen a cellar of this kind of quality and condition in such quantities. It's a bit like unearthing a wine crypt."