After a visit to a private cellar in California in 1972, Michael Broadbent, the late critic who introduced fine wine auctions in Christie’s, described it as “perfection”.
The owner of the cellar was Benjamin Ichinose, a Japanese-American collector.
Ichinose was a US Army captain practising orthodontics in Yokohama, Japan, before he returned to the San Francisco Bay Area and began a pursuit of wine with his wife. He would go on to amass a collection of over 55,000 bottles — mostly French, Californian and German wines, port, sherry and madeira.
He also took care to find the choicest vintages corresponding