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Bonhams to auction inaugural vintage from the Kingdom of Bhutan
Auction house Bonhams is to offer the first-ever vintage from the Kingdom of Bhutan in its latest auction in collaboration with the Bhutan Wine Company, which is says is a “unique opportunity” to own wine from a brand-new wine region.
The commemorative blend, which is named Ser Kem (meaning an offering of alcohol to the Gods) First Barrel, comprises a blend of grapes from four different vineyards, comprising just one barrel with a blend of six red and four white wines that were produced during the inaugural 2023 viticultural season. As the Bhutan Wine Company’s co-founder Michael Juergens told the drinks business last year, the first vintage was designed to be a collector’s piece and a “memo to the future”, rather than a true foray into production for commercial consumption, or “a precise promise of what’s to come”.
The online auction, which runs from 3 – 24 April includes 48 lots of wine from the Himalayan kingdom, some with unique experiences, which are being offered without reserve, with estimates ranging from $4,000 to $80,000.
The top lot comprises a customised large format bottle called The Himalayan, a 7.57L bottle of wine, which pays homage to highest unclimbed mountain in the world, Gangkhar Puensum in Bhutan, which measures 7,570 meters, along with a curated trip to Bhutan.
The Himalayan is the only one of its kind being released onto the global wine market – one further bottle was presented to the King of Bhutan.
The Bhutan Wine Company was founded by Michael Juergens, a partner at Deloitte, who leads the Deloitte Winery Solutions and Services practices and his partner Ann Cross following a trip to the remote country in 2017, following which Juergens spent six months researching and writing a white paper detailing a 10-year-vision for how Bhutan would build a sustainable, world-class wine region in the Himalayas, from grape to glass. The couple subsequently joined forces with two Bhutanese man, Yab Dhondup Gyaltshen and former diplomat Karma Choeda to found the company, which now counts Jancis Robinson MW as a members of its advisory board, supported by the government of Bhutan.
Speaking to the drinks business last year, Juergens noted that the country’s “incredible diversity of micro-climates, elevations and soils, the purity of the environment and the government’s support of the initiative made the venture completely irresistible to both of us”.
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The tiny landlocked country, which comprises about 14,000 square miles and only 300 miles north to south, is perched on the eastern ridges of the Himalayas in south-central Asia and until the 1970s was a remote kingdom inaccessible to outsiders, having never been a stop on the Silk Road, or subject to a Roman invasion. Despite its small size, however, the climate changes considerably with elevations and soils, and there are three main climactic regions – The subtropical Duars Plains; the more temperate Lesser Himalayas and the alpine tundra of the Great Himalayas.
The first vineyards were planted in 2019 covering a variety of climates and altitudes (up to to 9,150 feet in elevation), and including both experimental and commercial vineyards, with plantings of around 17 varieties, dominated by classical varieties such as Cabernet Sauvignon, Tempranillo, Sauvignon Blanc and Riesling.
In a release from Bonhams today, Juergens said that the Bhutan Wine Company was about to realize its dream of sharing Bhutan’s first wine with the world having spend “the better part of the last decade trying to capture the magical essence of Bhutan in a bottle of wine.”
“There is no other single wine region on the planet with the same level of diversity of terroirs in such a small area,” Cross added. “As the first carbon-negative country, Bhutan benefits from harmony in its environment with pure water, no smog, pristine soil, high biodiversity, and a long history of growing diverse world-class agricultural crops.”
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