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Bottle of Bordeaux wine sells for £135,000 at Christie's

A single bottle of wine has sold for £135,000 in a London auction.

The six-litre bottle of 1961 Chateau Latour was sold to a Chinese bidder at Christie's auction house.

The sum was more than three times the expected price. Wine experts said the bottle was of "perfect provenance".

It would take someone earning the average UK wage more than five years to save up for the bottle. After tax, Prime Minister David Cameron could not afford it with his annual salary.

In many parts of the UK it is possible to buy a house for less than the bottle.

Chateau Latour, made in Bordeaux, France, is considered one of the top five wines produced in the region.

Gary Boom, founder of London-based fine wine merchant Bordeaux Index, said: "The prices were encouraging but not surprising and shows how important the provenance is and how essential it is to buy from trusted and immaculate sources.

"Quite simply, when you have perfect provenance and a squeeze on supply then it's no surprise that prices reach these levels."

The fine wine market has been booming in London despite the economic slowdown.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-13584532

The world's oldest champagne, which spent about 170 years at the bottom of the ocean, may fetch as much as €100 million ($140 million) a bottle at auction.

Two bottles go on sale today in Mariehamn, capital of Aaland, a Finnish-controlled archipelago of 6500 islands in the Baltic sea, where divers discovered the precious cargo in a previously unknown shipwreck.

"This is truly a historic event," Stephane Baschiera, president of Veuve Clicquot, said.




"We have worked closely with the government of Aaland since the discovery of the shipwreck to help salvage and protect the precious wines, which we know now were tasted by Madame Clicquot herself."

New York-based wine specialist Acker Merrall & Condit, which is running the sale, quoted Richard Juhlin, an authority on champagne, as saying the bottles might fetch €100,000, 10 times the minimum price of 10,000 euros. Acker Merrall said it sold two bottles of 1959 Dom Perignon Rose in April 2008 for a combined total of $84,700.

About 145 bottles were found intact, including Veuve Clicquot, Heidsieck — today made by Vranken-Pommery Monopole — and Juglar, which became part of Jacquesson. The two being sold are from Juglar and Veuve, which will also offer 15 rare bottles from its own cellars and is a partner in the sale.

Two bottles were cracked open in November and I got to taste the Juglar, which was remarkably fresh. The fizz had almost gone and it was too sweet for today's palate, yet it retained a distinctive smell of orange and raisins, like a Christmas cake. It might still be served as a dessert wine.

The original destination of the champagne isn't known. There is speculation it may have been en route to the tsar's court in St Petersburg.

It was well preserved because it lay horizontally, under pressure, at a low temperature in the dark, 50 metres below the surface.



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