Wine value doubles to HK$1m in just 2 weeks
The auction price of Château Lafite 1982 has more than doubled in less than two weeks, with the top two lots in the latest Sotheby's wine sale featuring the Bordeaux gem.
Two one-dozen lots of the famed wine each sold for HK$1.04 million to Asian collectors in the two-day Hong Kong auction that ended yesterday.
That was double the price fetched by Acker Merrall & Condit, which sold 12 bottles of the same vintage at HK$442,800 in another Hong Kong sale at the end of last month.
The latest sale put the price at about HK$86,600 a bottle. The annual average bottle price was US$3,184 (about HK$24,700) last year.
Also in Sotheby's auction, 12 bottles of Lafite 1986 fetched HK$918,750, 10 times its pre-sale high estimate of HK$85,000. The per-bottle price was more than 11 times that of a five-bottle lot sold in Christie's New York auction in December.
There is also strong interest in Pétrus, with 12 bottles of its 1990 vintage selling for HK$612,500 to HK$735,000 in three lots. Per-bottle price was more than double Zachys' December auction.
Twelve bottles of 1995 vintage went for HK$563,500, almost four times the estimate.
The two-day auction achieved HK$68.8 million, with 97 per cent of lots sold.
Robert Sleigh, head of Sotheby's Wine Asia, said the Lafite lots could not be taken as an indicator of the overall Bordeaux market. But there was always an appetite for top Bordeaux.
"No doubt there is strong demand for burgundy, but Bordeaux is always the backbone. It has the quality and volume," he said. "The market was stabilising last year, and it's been moving up for quite a few months now."
