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The British auction house Sotheby's has set a new record for sales of wines and spirits in 2023 with 149 million euros. This is almost one million euros higher than the 2022 result and is the third record result in a row. The number of auction lots was also 17 per cent higher than in 2022, meaning that the auctions bucked the trend on the secondary market, where prices fell last year. The Liv-Ex 100 index fell by around 14 per cent in the same period.
Nick Pegna, the global head of Sotheby's wine and spirits department, pointed out that activities have expanded significantly over the past ten years. In 2013, for example, sales totalled 54 million euros; in 2019, the year before the pandemic, they amounted to 111 million euros. "We sold as many wines and spirits by value in one exceptional week in 2023 as we did in the whole of 2013," says Pegna.
The ten best-selling wine producers at Sotheby's in 2023 were
Hospices de Beaune: €23 million (17 per cent of total wine auction sales)
Domaine de la Romanée-Conti: 20 million euros (13%)
Domaine Leroy & d'Auvenay: 10.3 million euros (7%)
Petrus: 5.6 million euros (4%)
Domaine Armand Rousseau: 4.7 million euros (3%)
Krug: 1.9 million euros (1%)
Château Lafite Rothschild: 1.9 million euros (1%)
Château Mouton Rothschild: 1.9 million euros (1%)
Château Latour: 1.9 million euros (1%)
Château Haut-Brion: 1.4 million euros
Champagne Krug is thus represented in the top 10 for the first time. Domaine de la Romanée-Conti's auction sales rose by 40 per cent. The auctions of private collections recorded particularly strong sales growth of 106 million euros. In 2022, they totalled 93 million dollars, compared to 70 million euros in 2021. The most expensive single bottle was The Macallan 1926 whisky labelled by Valerio Adami, which sold for €2.5 million in November, setting a new auction record for a bottle of spirits or wine.
(al / source: decanter)