’61 La Chapelle tops Sotheby’s sale

Three bottles of 1961 Hermitage La Chapelle stole the show at Sotheby’s latest London sale, beating Bordeaux and Burgundy to the top spot.

The trio of bottles made £25,850 (against a high estimate of £30,000) and went to an Asian buyer, as did the second best-performing lot, five bottles of Henri Jayer’s 1993 Vosne-Romanée Cros Parantoux which realised £21,150.

Another six bottles of Jaboulet’s famous monopole, this time from the 1978 vintage, made £10,810 – snapped up by a US buyer.

A US client also dropped £10,575 on 10 bottles of 1961 Latour and UK buyers went big on 1989 Petrus, 1982 Mouton Rothschild and a bottle of Domaine de la Romanée-Conti’s 1999 Romanée-Conti.

Single bottles of 2005, 1996 and 1985 Romanée-Conti also made the list of top lots, making £7,000-8,000 each.

Overall the sale on Wednesday of this week made £615,548. Summing up, Sotheby’s European head of wine, Stephen Mould, said: “The Bernheimer Collection drew global interest and achieved a total of £238,278, exceeding the high estimate. Buyers competed for rarities including a bottle of Château Mouton Rothschild 1945, which sold for £5,875 and five bottles of the impossible-to-find Dom Pérignon 1955, which fetched £3,750.

“The range of Hermitage La Chapelle attracted wine lovers from across all continents. Three bottles of the gigantic 1961 vintage brought the top price of the day, while six bottles of the 1964 vintage soared over estimate to sell for £6,815.  The 2006, 2007 and 2010 vintages of Duo, an exciting blend of La Chapelle and La Lagune released in very limited quantities, were highly sought-after by collectors. Elsewhere, there was strong interest in young classed growth Bordeaux, DRC and Domaine Leflaive. These results bode well for our forthcoming London sales: A Century of Classic Wine on 2 December and The Exceptional Cellar of Connoisseur on 16 and 17 December.”