Chateau Latour and Christie’s to run ex-cellar sale

Chateau Latour is looking to emulate the runaway success of Chateau Lafite's Hong Kong auction last year with its own extraordinary ex-cellar sale.

Christie’s Hong Kong will offer offer bottles from vintages from 1863 to 2009 direct from the cellars of the chateau, on 27 May.

All bottles have been inspected and authenticated by Chateau Latour’s CEO, Frédéric Engerer, and every bottle bears a ‘Prooftag’ traceability and authentication seal.

Back labels are inscribed with the words, ‘This bottle was released directly from the cellar of Château Latour in April 2011 specifically for Christie’s auction in Hong Kong on May 27th 2011’.

Christie’s head of wine for Asia, Charles Curtis, told Decanter.com, ‘We are going right back to some of the oldest bottles that they have at the chateau, in a variety of formats’.

Christie’s last held an ex-cellar auction of Latour in Hong Kong three years ago, in 2008, ‘but,’ said Curtis, ‘the landscape has changed since then, with the idea of provenance becoming ever more important’.

The team will be hoping for better results from last week, when Christie’s Hong Kong held a wine auction that sold only 68% of the lots on offer, or 699 lots from 1016 for sale.

This was highly unusual in a market that has seen 100% sell-through on wine auctions for the past two years.

Christie’s will also be hoping to better the record-breaking prices of its arch rival Sotheby’s Lafite auction in Hong Kong in October last year.

At this US$8.4m sale, three bottles of 1869 Lafite – direct from the chateau – became the world’s most expensive wine sold at auction, fetching US$233,972 each.

Written by Jane Anson in Bordeaux