A single bottle sold for $387,500 as a “historic” wine auction of a Rothschild family collection realised $11 million, setting 162 world records.
An 1870 magnum of Château Lafite Rothschild set the top mark, a world record, and easily surpassed its $75,000 estimate at the Zachys sale of the Jacqueline (de Rothschild) Piatigorsky Collection in New York on 19 September.
Jacqueline (de Rothschild) Piatigorsky was a direct descendant of the Rothschild family who own Château Lafite. She died in 2012.
In total, the sale of her collection made four times pre-sale estimates to total $11.16 million.
Jacqueline Piatigorsky was born into the Rothschild family and lived 100 years. She was an international chess competitor, an artist, a patron of the arts and a very good wine collector.
“History was made within the first minutes, when the opening 35 lots set world records,” Zachys said.
The collection was built from newly released bottles, which had been kept in cellars in France ever since. Jacqueline Piatigorsky didn’t sell a single bottle from her collection, and many items had never been seen at auction before.
The Rothschild family bought their Bordeaux estate in 1868. The 1870 Lafite is still regarded as one of the greatest wines ever made.
Lafite wines – 498 bottles in 177 lots – brought in $6.49 million of the sale total.
Estimates were surpassed across the board. A double magnum of Lafite Rothschild 1878 made a world record $312,500 against a top estimate of $40,000. An 1869 magnum sold for $231,250 against a high estimate of $30,000 – another world record.
The best-performing wine not from the Lafite estate was an 1899 set of three bottles of Château Haut-Brion that realised $106,250 against a top estimate of $18,000.
Charles Antin, Zachys’ global head of wine auctions, said: “This auction was truly a pinnacle of my wine auction career.
“At every step in the process, from the time I first saw the inventory on paper decades ago to inspection of the bottles in Pauillac with my colleagues earlier this year, we knew we were making wine auction history.”
Earlier this year, Christie’s hosted a sale from the collection of William I. Koch, realising $28.8 million to set a North American record for a single-owner wine collection.
In 2023, sales from the cellars of Taiwanese billionaire Pierre Chen began. In total, the series of auctions is expected to realise over $50 million to be the most valuable single-owner wine collection auction ever.
