The postscript to the Magnificent Private Cellar of Dr. Stormby is the four bottles of Romanee Conti from Domaine de la Romanee Conti (or DRC), the most celebrated and scarce wine in the world.

Not only is the Burgundian wine regarded as perfection--far more complex, sophisticated and, ultimately, delicious than the very best year of the very best Bordeaux--only around 2,000 cases are produced in a season (though as many as 4,000 with a bumper crop). Each bottle is about $2500, but it's not the price, it's the allotment: one-third stays in Europe, one-third goes to Asia and one-third to America. That's less than 700 cases for this entire hemisphere. Which trickles down to three cases each for the three or so finest wine stores in New York, with each bottle promised to their top customers long ago.

Think about it: 2,000 cases for the entire world, for every New York chairman, Russian industrialist, French general, Brazilian sugar king, Japanese royal, Taiwanese shipping magnate. You might know the most powerful family in a city of millions, able to make traffic lights change color for their drive to the airport, but it doesn't mean they're going to get a bottle of Romanee Conti.

But a Black Card and a reservation at a Michelin-starred restaurant will. Restaurants also have limited allotments, and while nobody will go on the record as to how many bottles they receive, off the record I've been told that one of Manhattan's greatest restaurants, in Midtown, gets eight bottles every year, and another, a little farther north, gets ten.

These days they're selling one or two bottles a month--at $4000 to $10,000 each--which means they're running out.

And they can't run out. Every great wine list must have Romanee Conti, period.

So restaurants are turning to auctions, which are expensive, and risky: DRC takes extraordinary steps to make sure your allotment is delivered in mint condition, whereas a show-off collector might've left a bottle of Romanee Conti out on his desk for a couple of months.

Dr. Stormby, on the other hand, was known for his exceptionally conscientious cellaring, and professional sommeliers took notice.

Dr. Stormby's four bottles sold for:

Romanee Conti 1969, $7,735
Romanee Conti 1972, $4,998
Romanee Conti 1978, $10,115
Romanee Conti 1983, $4,760

The next time you see a Romanee Conti 1978 on a wine list for $20,000, you might venture it was cellared in Mamlo, and sold by Zachys at Daniel.

--Oliver Schwaner-Albright