Domaine de la Romanée-Conti collection sells for nearly €500,000 at iDealwine
A collection of 124 bottles of Domaine de la Romanée-Conti from a collection “in a league of its own” achieved nearly €500,000 at an iDealwine auction this week – well above the expected pre-sale estimate.
The original lower estimate for all 124 lots had been set at €340,940, prior to the sale.
The sale of the cellar of a long-time collector of DRC in France, who realised that he would not be able to drink his entire collection in his lifetime and decided to sell part of it, comprised nine different DRC cuvées: Romanée-Conti, La Tâche, Richebourg, Grands-Échézeaux, Échézeaux, Romanée-Saint-Vivant, Montrachet, Corton and Corton-Charlemagne. There were also seven Grand Crus, which achieved the equivalent to €16,893 on average per bottle.
The top lot was a bottle of 2015 Romanée-Conti DRC, which was sold to a French-based buyer after 30 bids were offered online (six times 5.6 average bid per lot). The hammer price was €16,200, rising to €20,380 once fees and VAT was taken into account, against a pre-sale estimate of €13,000, (excluding fees and VAT). The last time iDealwine sold the same wine was in November 2024, when it sold for €19,247, although this has come down from the 2022 peak, when it sold for €31,620.
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This strong result helped push the average unit price of French buyers into pole position, at €7,707.
However the auctioneers noted that Asian buyers took 46% of lots by volume (57 lots), predominantly buyers in Hong Kong, along with a few from South Korea and Singpore). Europe excluding France was the country with the second highest representation, accounting for more than a third of buyers (42 lots), with Germany, Luxembourg, Latvia, Poland, Denmark, Spain and Austria, but to a lesser extent, Belgium, Italy, Switzerland and Estonia all represented. Meanwhile buyers from the UK accounted for nine lots, or 7% of the sale.
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