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The Hong Kong auction house Sotheby's has sold "one of the world's largest private collections of Domaine de la Romanée-Conti and Burgundy" for the equivalent of 5.84 million euros. The sum exceeded the estimated price by 17 per cent.
A total of 400 lots were put up for auction. 218 of them contained wines from the Domaine de la Romanée-Conti (DRC). They came from the cellar of an anonymous Swiss collector. The auction included vintages from DRC dating back to the 1960s as well as large formats from Romanée-Conti, La Tâche, Richebourg, Romanée-St-Vivant, Grands Échezeaux and Échezeaux. Also auctioned were wines from Rousseau, de Vogüé, Leflaive, Drouhin and Faiveley as well as the Hospices de Beaune.
According to Sotheby's, the anonymous Swiss collector had acquired most of the wines directly after publication. Most of them came from the wineries' authorised importers in Switzerland and London. Some were also purchased at Sotheby's auctions in the 1990s and 2000s.
Only around 80 per cent of the lots were sold, but many bids exceeded the auction experts' estimates. According to Sotheby's, the lot with the most expensive forecast, six magnum bottles of Romanée-Conti 1994, was not sold. The highest price was achieved by a Methuselah Romanée-Conti 1983 with the equivalent of 124,868 euros. Six bottles of Romanée-Conti 1991 were sold for 95,487 euros, and two Jeroboams La Tâche 1979 realised the same price.
(uka / Source: Sotheby's, Decanter and others)