If you’re going to toast to success, let it be to the auction of the world’s most expensive bottle of wine. Acker’s La Paulée sale in New York made headlines after the gavel came down at a record-shattering $812,500 for a 1945 Domaine de la Romanée-Conti, now the most expensive bottle ever sold at auction. Missing the million-dollar mark by a whisker, the bottle was one of only about 600 ever produced and came from the personal cellar of Robert Drouhin, a revered Burgundy figure and a pioneer of Oregon’s wine industry.
Interestingly, the shattering of the previous record broke no hearts, because that benchmark too belonged to the very same bottle of wine. In 2018, another bottle of 1945 Domaine de la Romanée-Conti sold for $558,000. In less than a decade, wine connoisseurs have watched the value of this mythical vintage jump by nearly 50 percent, yet another reason why collectors continue to treat rare bottles like liquid gold.
To better understand this, only a dive into the history of this Burgundy explains why the bottle is so expensive. The 1945 harvest yielded just two pièces de vin, essentially two Burgundy casks, and it was also the final Romanée-Conti made before the estate uprooted its exhausted old vines and replanted the vineyard. No new Romanée-Conti was produced until 1952. That rarity becomes even more striking when one considers that the vineyard, which produces red wine from Pinot Noir, typically makes around 5,000 to 6,000 bottles a year. Against that backdrop, the roughly 600 bottles from 1945 feel almost mythical.
“We made history this weekend,” John Kapon, chairman of Acker, said in a statement shared with Business Wire. “I’ve had the privilege of tasting the 1945 Romanée-Conti just three times in my life, and it is the greatest wine I’ve ever tasted… This weekend’s event exemplified the soul and spirit of Burgundy, bringing together the world’s top producers and collectors and creating the perfect conditions for a truly historic result.” It was not just a landmark day for the world’s most expensive wine. Acker said the March 26 to 28 event topped $25 million and set 460 new world records.
