Royal Opera House – November lockdown live broadcasts
9 November 2020
Dagsmejan: natural sleepwear for travellers
11 November 2020Vintage performers
Recent auction results have seen the most sought-after wines changing hands for amounts that almost beggar belief. And the trend shows no sign of abating
I
n October last year, Sotheby’s held one of its frequent fine wine auctions in New York. The sale catalogue was liberally scattered with the blue chip names that are reassuringly familiar to collectors: Jayer, Rousseau, Mouton, Pétrus, Lafite and Latour.
[membership level="1, 2"]
Recent auction results have seen the most sought-after wines changing hands for amounts that almost beggar belief. And the trend shows no sign of abating
I n October last year, Sotheby’s held one of its frequent fine wine auctions in New York. The sale catalogue was liberally scattered with the blue chip names that are reassuringly familiar to collectors: Jayer, Rousseau, Mouton, Pétrus, Lafite and Latour.
[membership level="1, 2"]But this was no ordinary day in the auction room; within a few hours, three bottles – two of red wine, one of single malt whisky – had sold for a combined total of almost $2m (£1.5m).
It says much about the current fine wine auction market that the whisky was, if anything, a disappointment. The bottle of Macallan 60-year-old, 1926, featuring a label designed by pop artist Sir Peter Blake, sold for ‘only’ $843,200.
That was some way short of the record set by another bottle of the same whisky, this time with a label designed by Italian artist Valerio Adami, which had changed hands at Bonhams in Edinburgh for $1.1m earlier that month.
The wines were another matter. The two bottles of Romanée-Conti 1945 had been expected to fetch $32,000 each, but confounded the most optimistic expectations by selling for $558,000 and $496,000.
This did not so much break the previous single bottle auction record as utterly obliterate it: in 2007, a bidder had paid $310,700 for a bottle of another 1945 wine, from Château Mouton Rothschild. But that bottle was a jeroboam – the equivalent of six standard bottles.
Sotheby’s was swift to mark the significance of the event. ‘The new world record… is further proof that the demand for wine and spirits of exceptional quality is at an all-time high, and that global collectors are willing to go the extra mile to acquire the rarest bottles of any kind,’ said Jamie Ritchie, worldwide head of Sotheby’s Wine.
The combination of two or more fiercely determined bidders can send prices soaring into the stratosphere, particularly when the equation of quality and rarity is particularly compelling
Freak events are relatively frequent in the auction world. The combination of two or more fiercely determined bidders can send prices soaring into the stratosphere, particularly when the equation of quality and rarity is particularly compelling.
That was certainly the case with the Romanée-Conti bottles – two of only 600 made that year by the fabled Domaine de la Romanée-Conti (DRC), a producer which routinely tops the fine wine auction charts.
But a closer look at the auction scene suggests that there is a wider trend at work. More people are spending more money on more bottles of rare and collectable fine wines and spirits than at any other point in history.
The two DRCs and the Macallan weren’t even the most expensive transactions recorded by Sotheby’s in 2018; the company’s retail arm in Hong Kong sold seven methuselahs (each equivalent to eight standard bottles) of assorted DRC 2005 wines for a cool $1.5m.
In all, the company’s fine wine and spirits auctions recorded sales of almost $100m in 2018, up more than 50% on the year before, with revenues in Hong Kong more than double those of 2017.
That last statistic points to one of the key factors in the explosive growth of fine wine auctions.
An emerging generation of collectors and investors is displaying the passion – and the wherewithal – to drive the market on to new heights. The fine wine scene is a global one, with enthusiasts across Europe and the Americas, but if it has an epicentre, it lies in Greater China and the surrounding Asian economies.
Some Old World types still look down their noses at this new guard, telling (mostly tall) tales of Pétrus mixed with Coca-Cola and of fine wine purchases inspired by the picture on the label, rather than the liquid inside.
Apart from being xenophobic, these comments are also wrong-headed. Collectors in the Far East have left behind an early obsession with Lafite and other Bordeaux classed growths, embracing the stars of Burgundy and beyond: everything from prestige cuvée champagne to the top wines of Piedmont, Ribera del Duero, California and the Rhône.
Nonetheless, it’s important to keep a sense of perspective here: some 88% of Sotheby’s worldwide fine wine sales in 2018 involved Bordeaux and Burgundy; of the top 50 most expensive lots sold last year by online wine auctioneer iDealwine, 48 came from these pre-eminent regions. But, of iDealwine’s 50 most expensive bottles, only two were Bordeaux – and six came from the Rhône Valley.
More than 100,000 bottles of whisky were auctioned in the UK in 2018, up nearly a third on 2017, with value soaring by 63 per cent to £40.7m.
Nowhere is this increasing diversity more evident than in the boom in rare whisky. Two years ago, whisky and cognac were almost an afterthought for most fine wine auction houses – a few bottles tacked on towards the end of the catalogue.
Now it’s different. Bonhams, which has had a longer-term interest in spirits, saw a number of records smashed in 2018, selling three of those 60-year-old Macallan bottles for sums between £750,000 and £850,000, setting a new world record for a bottle of Japanese whisky (Karuizawa 1960, 52-Year-Old The Dragon, £231,035) and selling a 1996 cask of Macallan in Hong Kong for almost £350,000.
Christie’s, which came late to the fine wine and spirits party, revealed that four out of its top 10 most expensive lots in 2018 were whiskies, headed by the biggest record-breaker of the lot – another Macallan 60-year-old, this time in a one-of-a-kind bottle hand-painted by Irish artist Michael Dillon. Including premiums, it sold in London in November for £1.2m.
In the UK alone, the rare whisky market is surging as never before. According to consultant and broker Rare Whisky 101, more than 100,000 bottles of whisky were auctioned in the UK in 2018, up nearly a third on 2017, with value soaring by 63% to £40.7m.
That was undoubtedly helped by those headline Macallan bottle sales, but RW101 director and co-founder Andy Simpson says they were ‘by no means the exception’, highlighting ‘phenomenal growth’ for bottles selling for more than £1,000.
The expansion of the entire market, from the old hands of Burgundy and Bordeaux to the new wave of fine spirits, is creating huge interest and momentum among investors and collectors – and the auction houses are working hard to exploit that.
Booms of every kind have a life-cycle, typically involving exponential growth, a peak nobody identifies at the time, and then inevitable decline.
With hindsight, the multiple records broken in 2018 may signal a high water mark for the global fine wine auction scene – but there’s no sign of this particular bubble bursting any time soon.
Words: Staff
Big names: the high rollers of the auction scene
Domaine de la Romanée-ContiPrimus inter pares in Burgundy; consistently the most sought-after and expensive fine wine producer, with an array of excellence spearheaded by the eponymous Romanée-Conti vineyard. Macallan
The Speyside single malt accounts for roughly a third of the UK rare whisky market at auction, thanks to a spate of record-breaking 60-year-old expressions and its ever-popular Fine & Rare range. Château Pétrus
Alongside Burgundy, Bordeaux remains the mainstay of the fine wine market; classed growths Lafite, Latour, Mouton, Margaux and Haut-Brion are perennially popular, but everyone’s favourite Pomerol is a consistent favourite. Henri Jayer
The late Burgundy producer inspires huge reverence among aficionados from Boston to Beijing, not least for the single-vineyard Cros Parantoux bottling from Vosne-Romanée. Jean-Louis Chave
The six Rhône wines that made iDealwine’s top 50 in 2018 were all from Chave – and all, in fact, vintages of the same wine: the hen’s teeth-rare Hermitage Cuvée Cathelin. Karuizawa
A closed Japanese distillery that, within its lifetime, was known by few and praised by fewer. Long Sherry cask maturation has seen this ugly duckling transformed, with prices soaring on its huge reputation and scant supply.