Christie's Sells a Set of Grape-Themed Andy Warhol Prints
• Someone’s cellar walls must have been looking stark, as Christie’s sold a set of Andy Warhol’s Grapes D.D. prints Tuesday for $104,500 from their New York showroom. The six screenprints are signed by Warhol and dated 1979. According to Christie’s, each of the prints shows a different grape variety, although they are all simply referred to as “Grapes.” To Unfiltered, Warhol’s color-splashed, diamond-dusted, pop art botryoids appear to be anything from Merlot to Chardonnay. This is not the first time Warhol has mixed with wine; he is the artist of the iconic 1975 Mouton-Rothschild label, which incidentally uses similar color schemes as Grapes D.D., as well as the honoree of a special Dom Pérignon release.
• This June, Acker Merrall & Condit will bring two bottles of nearly 200-year-old bubbly to the block, the oldest Champagne currently on sale in the world. (Perrier-Jöuet has a couple bottles from around the same period buried in their cellar in Epernay.) The wines were discovered in July 2010 in a Baltic shipwreck that is said to have occurred in the mid-1800s. The bottles, one from Veuve Clicquot and the other from former Champagne house Juglar, are apparently from an early 1840s vintage and have the distinct provenance of being held at the bottom of the Baltic sea for the last 150-plus years. Acker doesn’t seem quite ready to set an estimate, but is “thrilled” to be chosen as the auctioneer of choice for the occasion. Rather than a flashy auction in New York or Hong Kong, Acker will hold the event in Mariehamn, the capital of the Aaland Islands of Finland. Don’t worry—interested collectors will be able to bid online or by phone, though absentee bidders will miss out on a flurry of shipwreck Champagne–themed events that the Aaland government, which owns the bottles, will be throwing in the week prior to the two-bottle auction.
• The NFL's Jarvis Green, a defensive end for the Houston Texans and two-time Super Bowl champion with the New England Patriots, hosted his fourth-annual Wine Tasting Gala benefiting disadvantaged single mothers this past March 19 at the Johnson and Wales Inn in Seekonk, Mass. He will host another wine tasting benefit in Baton Rouge, La., this May 27.
