VIN-TASTIC
Bottle of rare 1945 Burgundy wine fetches a record £424,000 at an auction
The record-breaking wine was one of 600 Romanee-Conti bottles produced in 1945
A BOTTLE of French wine fetched a record £424,000 at an auction yesterday.
The 1945 bottle of Romanee-Conti is widely considered the best Burgundy wine, and is one of the world's most prestigious producers.
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It was 17 times the auction house's estimate for the fine French wine.
Its vineyard, in the Cote de Nuits region, spans less than four acres, producing between 5,000 and 6,000 bottles per year.
It was one of 600 bottles produced in 1945.
The entire Romanée-Conti vineyard was uprooted in 1946 and did not produce wine again until the 1952 vintage, which currently averages a mere £6,000 per bottle.
A few minutes after Saturday's sale at an auction held at Sotheby's in New York, another 1945 Romanee-Conti was sold for £377,000.
The previous record for a standard wine bottle was held by an 1869 Chateau Lafite Rothschild, sold in Hong Kong in 2010 for £177,000.
But of all sizes, a £236,000 3-litre 1945 Mouton-Rothschild scooped the previous record at a 2007 auction in New York.
Saturday's lots came from the personal collection of Robert Drouhin, who from 1957 to 2003 directed wine producer Maison Joseph Drouhin, one of Burgundy's most famous.
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Elsewhere at the auction, a bottle of 60-year-old 1926 Scotch whisky fetched £641,000 - failing to break a £912,000 record set in October.
Founded in 1924, The Macallan distillery, of Carigellachie, northern Scotland, produced just 40 such bottles in 1986.
Unlike wine, whisky stops maturing once bottled.
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