It’s hard not to raise an eyebrow when you see that a bottle of wine has been sold at auction for 800,000 USD. But everything is explained when you see that it is a Romanée-Conti 1945, a legendary grand cru from Burgundy from a legendary year.
The auction was held in New York by Acker Wines and makes this wine one of the most expensive bottles of wine ever sold and breaks the previous record for Romanée-Conti 1945 of 558,000 USD from 2018.
1945, the end of the war and an exceptional year. But it was also an exceptional year for Romanée-Conti. It was the end of an era. It is the last vintage made with pre-phylloxera vines. These old vines were pulled up shortly after and the vineyard was replanted with grafted stocks. In fact, by 1945, almost all the other vineyards belonging to the Domaine de la Romanée Conti had already been replanted on grafted vines. Only 600 bottles of Romanée-Conti were made in 1945, an extremely small harvest from the vineyard, which totals 1.7 hectares. The vines were probably (evidently!) already quite tired.
But the result is said to have been an incredibly concentrated wine.
Read more: ackerwines
Travel: Come on a wine tour to Burgundy (and Champagne) with BKWine. (PS: We’ve written a prize-winning book on Burgundy and one about Champagne.)
