Wine Auction Breaks Single Lot Record in Hong Kong

Sotheby's has said that an auction in Hong Kong broke the world record for the most expensive lot of wine ever sold, as 114 bottles of Burgundy fetched HK$12,556,250 ($1.6 million) on Saturday. The auction house said a collection of Romanee-Conti, one of the world's most sought after Burgundy labels, sold for the equivalent of $14,121 for each bottle or $1,700 per glass.

The lot contained six bottles of each of the 19 vintages made from 1992 to 2010.

The previous record for a single lot of wine -- also held by Sotheby's -- was $1.05 million for 50 cases of top Bordeaux Chateau Mouton Rothschild 1982, sold in New York in 2006.

"The Romanee-Conti Superlot presented a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to acquire an unprecedented quantity of the world's most desirable wine," Robert Sleigh, head of Sotheby's Wine in Asia, said in a press release.

"It is only fitting that it has broken the world record to become the most valuable single wine lot ever sold at auction," he added.

A 66-magnum collection of Henri Jayer, owned by Silicon Valley magnate and Netscape founder James Clark, also sold for $1.1 million, or $16,000 per bottle.

Sotheby's did not release who acquired either lot.

The record sales come despite a much publicised anti-corruption campaign and separate austerity drive by Chinese president Xi Jinping which has hit luxury goods and vintage wine sales in Hong Kong hard.

According to a survey by Vinexpo Asia Pacific, mainland China's wine consumption fell by 2.5 percent last year, after 10 years of uninterrupted growth at a rate of 25 percent per year.

In 2013, China overtook France as the world's largest consumer of red wine, guzzling more than 155 million 9-litre cases or 1.865 billion bottles that year, according to Vinexpo.

But the official austerity drive in China has meant that people are increasingly turning to cheaper wines.

Source-AFP