Domaine Clarence Dillon, owner of Chateau Haut-Brion in Bordeaux, will offer 500 lots of ex-chateau wine in the first auction of its kind in Asia.
 All five wines offered by Domaine Clarence Dillon: Chateau Haut-Brion red and white, Chateau Quintus and Chateau La Mission Haut Brion red and white |
The auction will take place during Sotheby's October 2013 Autumn Sale in Hong Kong, with the wines - spanning 1891 to 2012 - expected to total more than $1.8m.
In addition to Chateau Haut-Brion, also featuring will be Chateau La Mission Haut-Brion and Chateau Quintus, both also owned by Domaine Clarence Dillon.
The last time Domaine Clarence Dillon offered wines from its cellar was at Sotheby's New York in 2004, a sale that saw spectacular success, with North and South American collectors scrambling for wines in perfect condition.
Wines offered in the present sale are immaculately preserved, having been housed in the Chateau's cellars before being shipped to Hong Kong in temperature-controlled conditions.
Chateau Haut-Brion is by far the smallest of the five First Growths in Bordeaux, making it also the rarest. It is the oldest known Bordeaux winery, acquired by the Dillon family in 1935.
"2014 will mark 80 years since Clarence Dillon, my great-grandfather, first visited Chateau Haut-Brion," Prince Robert de Luxembourg, chairman and CEO of Domaine Clarence Dillon, commented.
"This year my family celebrates 30 years of stewardship at Chateau La Mission Haut-Brion, as well as the bottling of our first physical vintage of Chateau Quintus.
"We have never in the history of our company offered such a rare and deep collection at auction."
The domaine certainly picked the right auction house for the task, with Sotheby's holding the world record for a single standard bottle of wine, after it sold at bottle of Chateau Lafite 1869 for $232,692 at its sale of the Lafite ex-cellars in October 2010.
The auction house also holds the record for a bottle in any format - a jeroboam of Chateau Mouton-Rothschild 1945, which sold for $310,700 in 2007.
Paul Fraser Collectibles brings you all the latest news on wine collecting and investment.
