Sotheby’s wine auction disappoints

Sotheby’s hotly anticipated first wine auction of the year fetched HKD 44 million (USD 5.6 million), falling short of its HKD 50-70 million estimate, the auctioneer said in a statement.
The sale – called Finest and Rarest Wines – trailed 983 lots including the Bordeaux Winebank Collection, but sold only 85 percent on offer, the auction power house said late Saturday.
Robert Sleigh, head of Sotheby’s Wine, Asia, attributed the disappointing sale to a tailing-off in demand for younger Bordeaux vintages, after buyers flocked to the wine over the last two years.
“[But] Burgundy, Champagne and Californian wines continued to perform very strongly, along with mature Bordeaux,” he added.
The top of the lot was a case of Romanee Conti 1990 which sold for HKD 1.8 million.
Other sale highlights include three magnums of Veuve Clicquot Champagne, 1921, 1929 and 1947, which Sotheby’s said were bought by a mainland Chinese connoisseur.
The disappointing results may slightly tarnish Hong Kong’s status as a leading wine market, which has been spurred by buyers from China – the world’s fastest-growing wine consumption market.