Burgundy ‘sizzles’ in Hong Kong as top Bordeaux falls below estimates
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Top Bordeaux wines including Lafite-Rothschild failed to achieve their lowest estimates at a recent Hong Kong wine auction - while Burgundy hit new heights.
DRC: Burgundy ‘sizzling’
Acker, Merrall and Condit‘s sale of US collector Don Stott’s cellar sold a number of Bordeaux lots last weekend, including Lafite-Rothschild 1982, which was estimated to sell at HK$320,000-HK$480,000 (£25,000-38,500).
Bidders picked it up for a much lower HK$260,000 (£20,800), and other first growth prices were similarly subdued.
John Kapon, CEO of Acker, Merrall and Condit, told Decanter.com, ‘I think the Bordeaux market got a little overheated. It’s been so strong for the past couple of years,’
‘There perhaps has been a bit of an oversupply, he said. ‘There’s also some resentment after the aggressive 2010 campaign.’
Yet the auction seems to suggest interest in top Burgundy is rising among Hong Kong and Chinese collectors.
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Over two days, 145 world auction records were set, raising a total of HK$112.7m (£9m) with a single jeroboam of 1999 Romanée Conti from Domaine de La Romanée Conti selling for more than £47,000.
Kapon added, ‘Burgundy is sizzling at the moment. China is waking up to the fact that Burgundy can make some of the world’s greatest wines.’
Written by Rebecca Gibb
Rebecca Gibb MW is a wine journalist and editor who has also founded Bamboozled games, ‘the world’s first wine and spirit puzzle makers’. Having spent six years living in New Zealand, she has recently returned to her native north-east England. While in New Zealand, she became a Master of Wine, graduating top of her class and winning the Madame Bollinger medal for excellence in tasting. A former winner of both the UK’s young wine writer of the year and the Louis Roederer Emerging Wine Writer, her first book The Wines of New Zealand was published in 2018. She also runs wine events and has her own consultancy business The Drinks Project. She was a judge at the 2019 Decanter World Wine Awards (DWWA).