Hong Kong's investment wine market has been on fire the past three years, with record-setting auctions and trade volumes that have been flowing like bottles of uncorked champagne on New Year's Eve. Last year, Hong Kong passed New York as the world's top wine auction market, with sales totalling a staggering US$165 million, an impressive 157 per cent above the 2009 total.
Industry experts agree however that, despite its overall size and volume, the Hong Kong market lacks diversity. 'We sell a very diverse group of wines in London and New York, but we sell a relatively narrow range of wines in Hong Kong,' said Robert Sleigh, Head of Wine in Asia for auction giant Sotheby's. According to Sleigh, Sotheby's Asia wine unit focuses its attention on bringing the rarest and most sought-after estates and vintages to auction. 'There's not very much value in bringing mid-range wines to Hong Kong,' said Sleigh.
Auctions here often feature some of the most expensive wines in the world, including the iconic five first growths, a premiere group of Bordeaux wines that rank among the world's most coveted bottles. 'Despite some people saying that Bordeaux is becoming a little pass?now and that people are diversifying into other areas, the first-growth estates are still seeing incredibly strong growth,' said Greg De'eb, Managing Director of local wine storage facility Crown Wine Cellars.
In October 2010, Sotheby's sold three bottles of one such first-growth wine, Ch?teau Lafite-Rothschild 1869, for HK$1,815,000 each, breaking the record for the world's most expensive wine sold at auction.
Ch?teau Lafite-Rothschild (Lafite), which is traditionally the most expensive of the first-growth estates, and one that Sleigh calls 'probably the only household wine name in China,' might have peaked however with last year's record-setting sale.
'Lafite has certainly stabilised. Everybody focuses on Lafite because its the icon wine in China,' said John Kapon, CEO of the world's biggest wine auction house Acker, Merrall & Condit. 'It can't go up 100 per cent every year. Its just not feasibly possible.'