A magnum of Lafite Rothschild 1887 offered for £22,500 ($28,300) at a Sotheby’s public sale of ‘vinous treasures’ spanning practically 200 years. The wine, held in storage with Octavian group in Wiltshire, had a pre-sale excessive estimate of £18,000.
A single bottle of Château d’Yquem 1831 offered for £27,500 (pre-sale excessive estimate: £20,000).
One other bottle of Yquem, from the 1896 classic, offered for £15,000, tripling its pre-sale excessive estimate. ‘A rare wine from a really nice Sauternes classic,’ mentioned Serena Sutcliffe MW, honorary chair of Sotheby’s’ wine division.
Sotheby’s mentioned complete gross sales within the London-based public sale hit £1.4m ($1.76m), with 99% of heaps discovering consumers. Wines have been sourced from a group amassed throughout 50 years by two generations of connoisseurs, it mentioned.
The vaunted Bordeaux years of 1945, 1959 and 1961 have been among the many top-selling heaps within the public sale.
Eleven bottles of Lafite Rothschild 1959 offered for £56,250 (pre-sale excessive e: £40,000), based on Sotheby’s outcomes.
‘Lafite nailed this classic to a wonderful stage and experiencing it marks one for all times,’ mentioned Sutcliffe in her pre-auction notes. She named it considered one of her favorite clarets of all time.
Amongst different highlights, 12 bottles of Château Latour 1959 fetched £50,000 (pre-sale excessive e: £42,000).
Past that, there have been sturdy costs for Petrus 1945, Mouton Rothschild 1945 and Latour 1961, all of which sit alongside Lafite 1959 in Decanter’s corridor of fame as ‘wine legends’.
One bottle of Petrus 1945 fetched £25,000 (pre-sale excessive e: £11,000) and a bottle of Mouton 1945 offered for £17,500 (pre-sale excessive e: £11,000), whereas a magnum of Latour 1961 fetched £25,000 (pre-sale excessive e: £13,000).
Not the entire wines featured within the public sale beat their pre-sale excessive estimates, however different notable highlights included a bottle of Petrus 1947, which offered for £23,750, eclipsing its excessive estimate of £4,500. A single bottle of La Mission Haut-Brion 1899 offered for £8,750 (pre-sale excessive e: £1,200).
Uncommon Burgundy additionally featured extremely within the sale. A magnum of Henry Jayer Echézeaux 1980 offered for £20,000, roughly in the midst of its pre-sale estimate vary (£18,000-24,000).
‘At this time’s sturdy end result exhibits, as soon as once more, the extent to which collectors worth the world’s rarest wines, with solely essentially the most excellent provenance,’ mentioned George Lacey, head of UK public sale gross sales at Sotheby’s Wine.
‘It was a privilege to be on the auctioneer’s rostrum to promote such a unprecedented vary of exceptionally uncommon mature bottles, the likes of that are so seldom seen.
‘Demand got here from all 4 corners of the globe, and the costs achieved, and enthusiasm with which we noticed spirited bidders competing for these historical bottles, speaks for itself.’
