Chateau Mouton Rothschild auction brings in HK$32 million
Sotheby's Chateau Mouton Rothschild sale sees one 66-bottle lot going for record price
The auction, featuring wine from Chateau Mouton Rothschild - one of the top five Bordeaux wine estates - took place on Friday night at Sotheby's Hong Kong gallery, with 93 per cent of the 263 lots selling above their estimates.
It was Mouton Rothschild's first-ever ex-chateau auction in Asia, a sale comprised only of wines that have been stored in the chateau since bottling.
Sotheby's website said the firm had been allowed "to search every corner of Mouton's great cellar to find historic gems and glorious, large format bottles".
The top lot was a 66-bottle lot of vintages from 1945 to 2012, excluding the 1958 and 1963. It sold to an Asian collector for HK$2.94 million, beating the estimate of HK$2 million. It set a world auction record for such lots.
The 2000 vintage performed well, with a lot comprised of 15 items of various sizes including standard bottles, magnums and a nebuchadnezzar (15 litre) fetching HK$1.72 million, more than double its estimate. Another nebuchadnezzar of the same year sold for close to HK$1 million.
Philippe Sereys de Rothschild, chairman of the supervisory board of Baron Philippe de Rothschild, said: "We were especially thrilled with the result of this sale that exceeded our expectations."
The chateau's emblem is a ram, which coincided with the coming Lunar New Year of the sheep. There is keen demand from sophisticated connoisseurs, whose number is growing in Asia over the past few years, according to the chateau.
The auction results came as Bordeaux wine prices have stabilised in recent months.
Trading exchange Liv-ex saw its Liv-ex Fine Wine 50 index rising by 1.1 per cent over the past month.
The index tracks the price movements of 10 recent vintages of the Bordeaux First Growths, which include Lafite Rothschild, Latour, Margaux, Haut-Brion and Mouton Rothschild.
