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If you think the fine-wine market is overheated, hold on to your spittoons.

Next month's annual Vintages Auction, the country's only commercial wine auction, will probably shatter the record for the highest price ever paid in Canada for a bottle of fermented grape juice.

It's also likely to set a new sales record, with the final tally expected to top $3-million, up from $2.6-million last year.

Among the highlights are two jeroboams of 1959 Domaine de la Romanée-Conti Richebourg, each equivalent to slightly more than four standard bottles, conservatively expected to fetch between $20,000 and $25,000 apiece.

Given the rarity of the large formats and the impeccable storage conditions of the prized Grand Cru pinot noirs from Burgundy, however, the hammer price could easily reach $30,000.

The current record for most ever paid for a bottle belongs to a jeroboam of 1949 Château Mouton Rothschild, the famed red Bordeaux, which went for $22,000 two years ago.

The second highest price, also set two years ago, was $9,500 for a 1.5-litre magnum of 1985 Sassicaia, a cabernet sauvignon from Tuscany.

By that past metric, the Richebourgs could turn out to be a steal. "They're just so rare and so pristine and the provenance is perfect," Stephen Ranger, president of Ritchies Auctioneers, said of the Richebourgs, which go on sale Oct. 12, the first day of the auction.

"They're the wine equivalent of a Blue Period Picasso."

That, in a very pithy analogy, is what so much wine today has become: collectible art. The U.S. economy may be showing soft patches, but the resale market for fine wines is as solid as ever.

The five-year-old Vintages Auction, which accepts wines on consignment for a 15-per-cent handling fee, is effectively Canada's only legal forum for reselling wine for cash.

Outside of that event, collectors looking to part with excess cellar inventory are limited to charity auctions offering tax deductions against personal income equivalent to the appraised value of the donation.

(The only other for-profit auctions in Canada have been conducted by the Quebec liquor board, but those have almost entirely been confined to the board's own inventory; the exception being a few personal Quebec cellars auctioned off by the board, one by one in small events, on behalf of individuals.)

My nominee for the most feverish bidding session of the auction is, paradoxically, one of the youngest items, a three-bottle set - in a flashy wooden case - of 2003 Screaming Eagle.

That's the cult cabernet sauvignon from Napa Valley that has become the darling of nouveau riche collectors. It's expected to sell for between $5,400 and $6,600.

Hot tip: The wiser money will be on two bottles of Château Petrus 1989, a certifiably stunning vintage of a great merlot from Bordeaux, expected to change hands for a mere $4,000 to $4,800.

One phenomenon expected to push up the Vintages Auction's tally this year is the 25th anniversary of the 1982 vintage in Bordeaux, often cited as the Big Bang of the modern wine-collecting boom.

Not only was 1982 exceptional for quality; it was the fateful vintage that ignited the literary career of a young government lawyer in Maryland named Robert Parker Jr.

Using a then-novel 100-point scoring system, Mr. Parker rocketed to prominence for presciently rhapsodizing over the uncharacteristically fruity 1982s in his fledgling newsletter, The Wine Advocate.

Mr. Parker also predicted the wines would age better than more restrained, classically styled vintages generally favoured by British critics, who enjoyed hegemony in the world of professional wine commentary.

Mr. Parker is now by far the world's most important wine critic. His unassailable scores can instantly launch prices and reputations into the stratosphere.

The 25th anniversary isn't just a conveniently round number. Many collectors believe the best 1982 reds from France's most famous wine region are at their peak for drinking. And the hefty Vintages Auction catalogue, all 341 pages, is littered with 1982 Bordeaux.

Among them: a bottle of Château Pichon Longueville Comtesse de Lalande, which received a perfect 100-point Parker score and is expected to haul in $800 to $900, and a bottle of Château Mouton Rothschild, another label to garner Mr. Parker's 100-point benediction in 1982, with an estimated selling price of $1,000 to $1,200.

This year's sanguine wine market notwithstanding, the elephant in the room at the auction will no doubt be the issue of authenticity.

Wine fraud has become a widespread phenomenon in the United States and England. In a particularly sensational case, the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation is probing allegations that one of the world's most celebrated collectors, who goes by the assumed name Hardy Rodenstock (a.k.a. Meinhard Goerke), is a fraudster.

For his part, Mr. Rodenstock, famous for treating fawning British wine writers to bacchanalian parties in which the usual professional practice of spitting is barred, denies ever pasting expensive-looking labels onto cheap bottles, as is alleged.

He also denies carving "Th.J" into several unlabelled bottles of Bordeaux said to have belonged to Thomas Jefferson, but now widely suspected to be fakes.

But the Rodenstock case would seem to have the aroma of something explosive. It even recently made its way into the authoritative pages of the New Yorker magazine, which raised the possibility that the supposedly flawless nose of Mr. Parker may have been duped when, in 1995, the critic awarded yet another one of his perfect 100-point scores to a magnum of "1921 Château Petrus."

The bottle, supplied by Mr. Rodenstock, is now tainted with suspicion, not least because Château Petrus's cellar master has reportedly said he believes the château did not bottle magnums that year.

But bidders in Toronto can probably rest easy. Barry O'Brien, director of corporate affairs for the LCBO, which operates the annual Vintages auction in conjunction with Ritchies, says wine fraud in Canada has been a negligible phenomenon. For that we can thank our liquor-monopoly system.

Because Canada has effectively been a closed retail environment, where virtually every bottle has been sourced by liquor boards from wineries themselves or their authorized agents, there's little room for crooks to launder their forgeries.

"The old stuff that's there is for the most part of impeccable provenance," Mr. O'Brien said. Besides, Ritchies and the LCBO would provide a refund should any bottle later prove fake.

That's not to say a trickle of illegal wine hasn't traded hands privately or that now one here has tried to capitalize on soaring fine-wine prices and new printing technologies to run off a few fake labels of 1982 Petrus.

In fact, it's happened.

Mr. Ranger of Ritchies said that a couple of years ago a bottle was instantly rejected in the "rigorous" screening process.

A seller came to Ritchies wanting to sell a bottle of, yes, 1982 Petrus, perhaps the world's most counterfeited wine. "The label was obviously faked," Mr. Ranger said, referring to the conspicuously poor reproduction. "It was a bit of a joke, actually."

The joke, it turns out, was on the would-be seller, who had bought the forgery at a charity auction.

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BUYERS AND CELLARS

The fifth annual Vintages Auction is the only commercial wine auction in Canada where collectors can legally resell their cellared bottles for cash and buyers can bid on old vintages. Dates Oct. 12-15. See websites below or call Ritchies at 416-364-1864 (ext. 270 or ext. 300) for hours and further details.Location Ritchies Gallery, 380 King St. E., Toronto Admission FreeWhat's on offer 2,729 lots (many containing multiple bottles). Catalogue available online at ritchies.com and vintages.com.Absentee bidding For those who can't attend, absentee bidding forms can be downloaded at ritchies.com and should be faxed or phoned in by Oct. 12. Call Jill Turner at 416-364-1864 ext 259.

Beppi Crosariol

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