Bottles of 1914 vintage Moet & Chandon Champagne have significantly beaten sales estimates at a Sotheby's auction in London, with the much-lauded 1928 vintage also faring well.
Sotheby’s sold three two-bottle lots of the 1914 vintage for almost £25,000 in total, including a buyer’s premium of 17.5%. The sale price was just over a third higher than the auction house’s top estimate.
One of the lots sold for £10,340, against a high estimate of £6,000, reflecting the high esteem in which the last vintage before World War One is still held.
‘Moët 1914 is a famous long-lived vintage of the house,’ Michael Edwards, Champagne judge at the 2013 Decanter World Wine Awards, told decanter.com prior to the sale.
Total sales at the Moet auction reached £147,333.
It included 270 75cl bottles, 174 magnums and three jeroboams of Moet vintages spanning 90 years up to 2004, and was held to mark the 270th anniversary of the LVMH-owned house. All bottles were released direct from Moet’s cellars.
Three two-bottle lots of 1921 also collectively beat their estimate, selling for an average £8,813 per lot versus a top estimate of £5,200 per lot.
The 1928 vintage, considered as one of the all-time great years for Champagne, also got buyers excited. Three lots of one bottle fetched £5,400 each, against an expected top price of £2,400-a-bottle.
Moet & Chandon’s chef de cave, Benoît Gouez, said, ‘I want to show that great vintage Champagnes are also great wines and the fact that there has been so much interest in this auction shows that more and more collectors understand this’.
Written by Chris Mercer
