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ON WINE: Tru takes advantage of off-hours to fortify its cellar and impress guests with wine auctions

ON WINE: Tru takes advantage of off-hours to fortify its cellar and impress guests with wine auctions

If a restaurant is judged by the company it keeps, then Tru in Chicago has won a food-and-wine-savvy clientele over the past nine years that would make any fine-dining spot proud.

But in the last year and a half, the award-winning, four-star destination in the Lettuce Entertain You Enterprises group has welcomed new guests that add to its luster—fine-wine collectors. Since early 2007,Tru has hosted live wine auctions conducted by Hart Davis Hart Wine Co., a retail wine company and auction house also based in Chicago. The events, running on seven Saturday afternoons this year, are filling the dining room at a slack time, making new friends for Tru and spelling record wine sales.

Tru’s art-filled, 80-seat dining room typically is packed to capacity with spirited bidders vying for rarities like 1961 Château Latour in magnum and a three-liter double magnum of 2000 Château Pétrus. An internet hookup allows absentee bidders around the world to take part in real time.

Because attendees often spend the day at Tru—an auction may run six or eight hours—many partake of an elegant buffet lunch offered during the event. Priced at $75, it features the James Beard Award-winning progressive cuisine of executive chef-partner Rick Tramonto and executive pastry chef and partner Gale Gand. The vaunted 1,800-item wine list is offered as well. For Tru, it creates incremental business on a Saturday when the house would otherwise be dark until dinner, not to mention a way to impress visitors who frequent leading restaurants.

The idea of staging wine auctions there came to Scott Tyree a few years ago, when he was the wine director of Tru.

Top lots at Tru’s May wine auction

LotPre-Sale EstimateSold
6magnums of 1961$32,000-$48,000$57,360
Chateau LaTour  
6bottles of 1943$26,000-$38,000$41,825
La Tache  
6bottles of 2003$24,000-$36,000$40,630
Romanée-Conti  
9bottles of 1990$22,000-$32,000$33,460
La Tache  

“I thought it would be a great venue because a lot of their clients are our clients,” says Tyree, who joined Hart Davis Hart as a buyer last year. Tyree surmised that the modernistic, clean design of Tru’s dining room and its attentive service would appeal to the auction crowd.

“For many years, people have associated fine-wine auctions with staid, clubby atmospheres,” Tyree says. “It turns out that the room is really perfect for an auction.”

Hart Davis Hart president Paul Hart concurs. “It’s our goal to make the experience as comfortable as possible for our clients,” he says. Of course, it’s also good for the auctioneers to keep attendees engaged longer and bidding on more items.

The relationship between restaurant and auction house “has turned out better than any of us expected, for both sides,” says Tyree. “It’s been excellent,” agrees Hart.

Indeed, the auction house has been on a hot streak at Tru. At seven of eight auctions held through May, 100 percent of the lots were sold. The April auction tallied more than $2.9 million, well over the presale estimate of $1.7 million to $2.5 million. The May auction brought $4.7 million.

Tru’s wine program is benefiting as well.

“We’re able to see the market first hand,” says Chad Ellegood, Tru’s current wine director, who often bids on gems to burnish his list. In addition, seeing what wines sell for at auction helps him “protect” his rare wines, or adjust the markups so they are not too rapidly depleted. He estimates that about 60 percent of Tru’s wines were bought at auction.

Although wines with stratospheric sale prices make the headlines, there are also relative buys that appeal to restaurant buyers. For example, the May catalog includes two cases of 2000 Joseph Phelps Vineyards Insignia, estimated at $650-$950 per case.

“It’s a popular restaurant wine often seen on lists,” Hart says. “Many restaurants like something that is seven years old and available in multiple-case quantities at reasonable prices.”

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