| A personal wine collection from the cellar of Baroness Philippine de Rothschild, owner of Château Mouton-Rothschild, brought in $2,223,417--roughly two and a half times the $848,000 pre-sale high estimate.
The spectacular results did not come as a surprise because the provenance of the collection could not have been better. All the wines had been housed at Château Mouton-Rothschild and hadn't moved since they were bottled. A selection of other first-growths all came directly from the properties. Past sales of château consignments have seen winning bids soar far above the high estimates, and this was no exception. For instance, a bottle of Mouton 1924 sold for $15,535.
The evening's showstopper, however, was a jeroboam (double-magnum) of the celebrated Mouton-Rothschild 1945 that sold to an anonymous telephone bidder for $310,700. A never-before auctioned Nebuchadnezzar (15 liters-20 standard bottles) of Mouton 2000 fetched $119,500, quadruple the high estimate. A magnum of Mouton 1949--which the late Baron Philippe de Rothschild once said was his favourite vintage-fetched over $38,000.
Anonymous buyers on the telephone dominated the sale. One caller snapped up vast quantities of the lots on offer, including standard bottles, magnums, jeroboams and imperials--enough to create a mini-Mouton museum.
The auction held on February 28 coincided with an exhibition of original paintings commissioned to illustrate the labels of vintages from the famed Château Mouton Rothschild, one of the world's greatest wines and a First Growth in the Bordeaux region. The 2004 label, a watercolour by Prince Charles was unveiled at this exhibition. |
