Twelve bottles of Romanee-Conti sold for HK$3.675 million ($474,000), leading records set at auctions by Christie’s International Plc in Hong Kong that raised HK$1.35 billion after three days.
The winning bid for the 1978 Burgundy on Nov. 23 by a Chinese buyer smashed the previous $345,000 auction record for a case of wine, while a record HK$70.7 million was bid for a painting by Zhu Dequn, the highest amount paid for the Chinese-French artist’s work. Christie’s will offer about HK$2 billion of items in the sale that ends Nov. 26.
The mood among buyers in Hong Kong was buoyed by this month’s record art sale in New York and auctions of diamonds in Geneva. The sale of postwar and contemporary art in New York earned $692 million and set new highest prices for 10 artists including Francis Bacon, Willem de Kooning and Jeff Koons.
“When those auctions did so well it’s keeping everyone confident,” said Pascal de Sarthe, a Hong Kong-based dealer. The record price for the Zhu artwork shows the “gap between postwar U.S. and Asian works is narrowing.”
Record prices for wine come even as the benchmark Liv-ex Fine Wine 50 Index erased gains made in the first 10 weeks of the year. While Bordeaux still dominates wine-fund holdings, Burgundies have taken an increasing share of top 10 slots at auctions, Bloomberg informs.
