45 Romanee Conti - new world auction record

New world auction record for any single bottle of wine set this morning at Sotheby’s. $450,000 hammer, approximately $550,000 after premium, for a single bottle of 1945 Romanee Conti. Online bid. Happy drinking!

Second bottle hammered at either $380,000 or $400,000.

That’s a lot of cabbage for less than a liter of grape juice. I hope the bottle didn’t immediately go through the shredder when the price was struck.

This is an extremely rare bilateral provenance: Rudi K de la Romanee Conti 1945…

So, quite a bargain!.. champagne.gif

definitely a bargain compared to the art market

Stupid money, bet it does not get opened

If you have this kind of money to spend on a single bottle of wine, you can probably afford to drink it

champagne.gif

except this is the wine market. art is a known entity that can be enjoyed every day, as many times as desired after purchase (assuming its not shredded immediately). Wine at best can only be enjoyed a single time, and at this age, maybe not at all.

Both hail and frost in 45, Robert Drouhin told me. Must have been a short crop. But it is the Victory year, and I think that counts for a lot.

Some of these bottles may have been the only remaining examples left in Burgundy.

Does anybody on the board have any ancient DRC besides Francois?

certainly it is not a direct analog, but there are quite a few similarities between how both markets operate.
at any rate, it is speculated that the aforementioned banksy is worth considerably more now.

I have to assume the bottle has absolutely impeccable provenance? Does anybody know?

Dan Kravitz

Yes. Everything in the auction had been cellared by Drouhin from the beginning and in many cases bottled there as well.

My guess had been 250K per, but I had figured that as the max. These results are surprising. 45 stole the day but there were a number of jaw dropping results.

Still, dwarfed by whisky:

Alex R.

Great you have that kind of money no do something productive with it!

Taking the money from the bank account and putting it back into circulation is quite productive.

Trickle down…your throat economcis.

so … that equals to more than $ 2000 per grape

This was where I thought it would go, and I don’t think it is that expensive for what it is.
The rarest wine from the greatest of all vintages with as good a provenance as you can get except for from the domaine, I doubt whether we will see another in my lifetime.