A major wine collection has sold for a record US$7.1m in Chicago.
Chicago auction house Hart Davis Hart sold all 1,876 lots from the cellar of collector Steven Verlin for US$7.1m (£3.5m) on 4-5 May.
Verlin, a New Jersey resident, was a founding partner of Veritas, a major wine-oriented Manhattan restaurant. He died in August.
The sale set a record for gross revenue at a Chicago auction.
To highlight the collection’s value, which was estimated at $4-6m (£2-3m), Hart published its catalogue in hard cover, and the single-owner sale, the auction house’s first since its founding in 2004, also introduced real-time online-bidding.
The top earner was a 6-litre imperial of 1990 Pétrus, fetching $59,750 (£30,000). An imperial of 1947 Mouton Rothschild and a Nebuchadnezzar of 1992 Domaine Ramonet Montrachet went for $53,775 (£26,900) each.
Two bottles of 1870 Lafite, recorked and given reproduction labels in 1998, went for $8,365 (£4,200), just above its low estimate of $8,000 (£4,000).
Other very old wines included a 1929 Latour ($3,107) and six bottles of 1945 Haut-Brion ($26,290).
Written by Howard G Goldberg in New York
