When John Kapon, president of the New York wine merchants Acker Merrall & Condit, touched down in Hong Kong this month for his firm's autumn auction, he said he had no idea what to expect.

Would his Asian clients, known for their insatiable demand for rare Bordeaux and Burgundy, buy big or hold back? Having recently displaced Americans as the leading purchasers of fine wine, wealthy Asian buyers are an important indicator of trends in prices.

The worsening global economy did not derail the autumn sale, but it did throw it off. While the auction did bring in $6.7 million, some 13 percent of the lots went unsold, compared with only 8 percent at the previous Hong Kong auction - held in May before the meltdown on Wall Street. Many of the lots that did sell in November, according to Kapon, were purchased at or below preauction estimates.

Among the unsold lots were 12 bottles of vintage 2000 Château Haut-Brion valued before the sale at 60,000 Hong Kong dollars, or $7,735, and three bottles of vintage 2005 Romanée-Conti, a sparely produced grand cru classé Burgundy whose preauction value was set at 200,000 dollars.

That no one raised a paddle for these two lots says more about collectors than the wines themselves. The fact is, after nearly three years of frenzied buying, fine wine collectors are pushing back, snubbing that which looks overly inflated and only buying when the price seems right.

"The estimates were a bit aggressive and based on a bull market in the spring," Kapon acknowledged. At the May auction, Kapon's firm had hauled in a record $8.2 million, including a hard-to-find case of Domaine de la Romanée-Conti 1990 that sold for an unprecedented $242,308.

By this month, however, wine buyers had found their bearings and were ready to make only the most judicious purchases. "Most lots still found eager buyers, even though bidding was more 'civilized' over all, and prices were relatively solid," Kapon said.

The autumn sale suggests a certain financial fortitude among Asian fine wine collectors less evident among their counterparts in Europe and the United States. At its fine wine auction in New York on Nov. 2, Sotheby's sold only 65 percent of its offering. Its rival auction house Christie's, meanwhile, sold 75 percent of its lots at a fine wine sale in Geneva on Nov. 18.

While Bordeaux and Burgundy blue-chips are still seen as havens, bidders at the Acker Merrall & Condit auction snapped up plenty of Champagne, Rhônes, and California cabernets, sometimes at a premium.

Among the sale's top sellers in Hong Kong was a lot containing 12 bottles of 1992 Screaming Eagle, a coveted cult wine from the Napa Valley of California that sold for 871,200 dollars. Meanwhile, a four-bottle lot of 2000 Châteauneuf du Pape Cuvée de Capo from Domaine du Pégaü in the Rhône Valley sold for 15,488 dollars, above its presale estimate.

The push-back by collectors is being felt not only at auctions but in the retail sector, too. Simon Staples, sales director at Berry Bros. & Rudd in London, quoted a case of 2000 Château Lafite Rothschild, priced at £10,000 in June, before a steep drop in the pound against the dollar, now selling for £7,800, or $12,000. A case of 2005 Château Mouton Rothschild, priced at £6,500 in June, is now available for £5,400. Staples deemed both "best buys" at the reduced prices, adding to that list the 2005 Château Palmer, currently listed at £2,400 a case.

Would-be collectors encouraged by such prices might be less so when they understand that such declines, while sharp, only put these wines back at their 2006 levels.

"You are only seeing the insanity stop at the top," said Serena Sutcliffe, wine director at Sotheby's in London.

In particular, Sutcliffe is referring to the three-year run-up in prices for coveted "investment wines," including first-growth Bordeaux from the 2000, 2005, 1990 and 1982 vintages, as well as always hard-to-find Domaine de la Romanée-Conti, among them La Tâche and Romanée-Conti.

Having attracted the most speculative attention from investors - including professionally managed wine investment funds - investment wines are the most subject to price volatility.

Liv-ex, a British fine wine exchange that tracks pricing around the globe, provides telling evidence of this trend. Its Liv-ex 100 fine wine index, which tracks the price of top-tier investment-grade wines primarily from Bordeaux and Burgundy, was down by 7.4 percent at the end of October.

In contrast, the Liv-ex 500 fine wine index, a more broad-based benchmark featuring collectible wines from around the world, showed a 12.3 percent gain over the 12-month period ended in October.

The index, which is based on best list price for each component wine it tracks, supports what many in the industry contend: that the bulk of fine wine collectors buy to hold and enjoy over long periods, as opposed to flipping their stock when times get tough.

While Liv-ex has yet to post its November figures, most industry observers are expecting relatively moderate declines in the broader fine wine sector for the period: As their gains over the past few years have been less steep, so will be their downward adjustments.

Sutcliffe suggested that collectors look for values among the 2000 and 2005 second-, third- and fourth-growth Bordeaux wines from St. Émilion and Pomerol. Not subject to the same level of investment speculation as their first-growth and Romanée-Conti counterparts, these wines probably will not experience the same drastic price corrections, either. Still, given their association with two truly prized Bordeaux vintages, they are a good value, particularly as their prices soften.

Exactly how much softening will take place is "hard to call," said Alun Griffiths, wine director at Berry Bros. & Rudd. While customer buying throughout the wine merchant's global network has slowed down, Griffiths said he had not yet seen any significant supply being returned to market, either by collectors or the trade.

This could change come January when, as Griffiths pointed out, small to midsize wine traders, needing to free up cash to buy 2007 Bordeaux vintages and other new releases, will be required by their bankers to liquidate inventory. While not outright fire sales, such developments could lead to real bargains, he said, particularly for previously supply-restrained 2000 and 2005 Bordeaux and Burgundy vintages.

"They are both great outstanding vintages and they will repay long-term collectors," he said.

A 32-year industry veteran, Griffiths saw it happen during the 1997-1998 Asian financial crisis. He recalled seeing a case of 1982 Château Mouton Rothschild - "the best wine of that great vintage" - drop to £2,800 from £4,000 in just a few months. That same case today - its contents considered at peak maturity - recently sold for £11,000 at auction.

To hunt down rereleased stock, Griffiths advised keeping a close eye on the Web sites of wine merchants. "That's the fastest way you will hear about inventory becoming available," he said.

As for the likelihood of a forced sell-off that could send prices tanking, Stephen Williams, proprietor of the Antique Wine Co. in London, said don't count on it. He brokers wines to some 17,000 clients in 67 countries. As Williams wrote in an e-mail message, "Fine wine is rarely leveraged or funded by debt, and therefore forced sale disposals rarely arise, even in the current market."

Tumultuous as times are, truly great vintages - for example those that came from Bordeaux in 1945, 1959 and 1961 - do have a track record for holding their value, which could explain why collectors aren't rushing to market to dump their stock.

Whether a collector buys now or in a few months, veteran industry observers like Williams say they believe wine values will resume their upward trajectory once the current financial crisis sorts itself out. So while prices might fall further, collectors who buy now, rather than wait for further fallout, are not necessarily leaving money on the table.

Clive Coates, a master of wine and the author of many books on Burgundy and Bordeaux, explained by telephone that since end of 1960s, there has been "an enormous increase in the market for fine wines and an enormous increase in the people who have oodles of boodles to spend on them."

While Coates says he thinks prices could fall an additional 15 percent to 20 percent, he does not think they will stay there for long. "We are still stuck with the basic fundamentals, which is a finite supply and increasing demand. At the moment prices are inflated, but the market, long term, is still going to be one where there are more and more buyers from places like Russia and China and India."