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This Record-Shattering Bottle of Wine Just Sold for the Price of a House in Los Angeles
What's the most expensive wine in the world? A bottle of 1945 Romanee-Conti — which just obliterated records.
What is the most expensive wine in the world? Well, that would be a bottle of 1945 Romanee-Conti, which just shattered records to become the most expensive bottle of wine ever sold at an auction — with a winning bid of... $558,000. Five hundred fifty eight thousand dollars.
That's what you might call bookoo bucks. Kardashian kash, even.
For scale, that almost exactly matches the median price tag for a home in notoriously spendy Los Angeles: $570,500. (OK, we exaggerated a little: That was the 2015 median; now it's $615,000. But you get the gist. It's a lot to spend on a one-night buzz.)
The bottle of 1945 Romanee-Conti sold at Sotheby's for an astounding 17 times more than what it was originally expected to fetch: $32,000. The drama wasn't done, though: Another bottle of the same wine and vintage went for $496,000 just a few moments later at the October 13 auction.
The bottles obliterated the previous record for the most expensive bottle of wine ever sold; that penny-ante item was a three-liter bottle of 1945 Mouton-Rothschild. Sotheby's sold it in 2007 for $310,000 — mere pocket change in comparison. Again, for scale: $310,000 will currently buy you a home in Wellington, Florida — just named the country's best place for golfers to retire by Money. (The more you know!)
CBNC notes that "the sales — along with a bottle of whiskey that sold at Sotheby's on Saturday for $843,200 — shows that demand for the rarest and best trophy wines and spirits remains strong despite global stock market jitters and trade wars."
Jamie Ritchie, worldwide head of Sotheby's Wine, said, "The new world record established in today's sale is further proof that the demand for wine and spirits of exceptional quality is at an all-time high, and that global collectors are willing to go the extra mile to acquire the rarest bottles of any kind."
Romanee-Conti only produced 600 bottles in 1945, the last year the producer used its older vines before it replaced them with younger ones in 1947. (And when you consider that, $558,000 almost sounds like a bargain.)
