Alex Ferguson’s wine makes £2m

Christie’s sale of wines from Sir Alex Ferguson’s collection made over £2 million (HK$29.3m) this weekend in Hong Kong.

The leading lot from the ex-Manchester United manager’s cellar was a Methuselah of 1997 Domaine de la Romanée-Conti which sold for £94,815 (HK$1.2m).

DRC dominated the top lots from the collection, with other leading lots including six-bottle cases of the 1999, 1995, 2005, 2002, 2001 and 2009 vintages.

David Elswood, head of wine at Christie’s, said: “A very strong combination of bidding from both wine lovers and fans of Sir Alex Ferguson CBE has resulted in an excellent sale total for today’s auction, particularly for the wines of Domaine de la Romanée-Conti.

“Chinese buyers continued to dominate in this sale and showed great enthusiasm, especially for the rarest wines of Burgundy, combined with some unique signed memorabilia from Sir Alex.”

The second part of the sale will take place on 5 June in London, while the third and final part will be sold online between 9 and 23 June.

Also over the weekend, Christie’s raised a further HK$44.6m (£3.4m) with another fine wine sale of which included the collection of Jean-Claude Biver.

Simon Tam, head of wine in China, said: “Asian connoisseurs showed their keen appreciation for documented provenance and fine vintages ranging from Château d’Yquem to Domaine de la Romanée-Conti.

“One of our auction highlights was an extremely rare 1811 bottle of Château d’Yquem, while other turn of the century d’Yquem classics were equally well received. We also saw bottles from the bodega of Vega Sicilia achieving some four times their pre-sale estimates.”

The single bottle of 1811 Yquem realised HK$918,750 (£71,111), some way above its HK$600,000 high estimate.