Billionaire US collector William I. ‘Invoice’ Koch supplied a portion of his huge wine cellar over three days through public sale home Christie’s and complete gross sales hit $28.8m (£21.2m), with a number of high heaps beating excessive estimates.
That’s a brand new report for ‘a single-owner wine assortment offered in North America’, stated Christie’s, which marked its return to the New York Metropolis wine public sale scene in fashion.
Each lot discovered a purchaser as bidders competed for hundreds of bottles from cellar of Invoice Koch, a widely known US collector who started shopping for superb wine as a younger graduate.
Massive-format bottles of Burgundy wines from the Eighties and Nineteen Nineties created notably sturdy curiosity amongst bidders.
Prime lot was a 600cl ‘Methuselah’ bottle of Domaine de la Romanée-Conti’s lauded Romanée-Conti Grand Cru from the 1999 classic. This offered for $275,000, together with purchaser’s premium – above a pre-sale excessive estimate of $160,000.
Three 150cl magnums of the identical wine additionally collectively offered for $237,500, versus a excessive estimate of $90,000.
Domaine Georges Roumier wines additionally led the public sale. Six magnums of Bonnes Mares 1985 offered for $200,000, outstripping a pre-sale excessive estimate of $85,000, whereas three magnums of Chambolle-Musigny, Les Amoureuses 1985 offered for $162,500 (excessive e: $48,000).
A magnum of Roumier Bonnes Mares, Vieilles Vignes 1988 additionally offered for $87,500, towards a pre-sale excessive estimate of $14,000.
Costs didn’t soar above estimates on each lot, though many nonetheless fetched giant sums. On day two, eight bottles of Domaine Leroy, Musigny 1999, offered for $187,500 – inside a pre-sale estimate vary of $140,000 to $200,000.
Latour 1961 was a Bordeaux spotlight of the sale. Photograph credit score: Christie’s Pictures Ltd. 2025.
Bordeaux was one other main part of the sale. Château Latour 1961 is a Decanter Wine Legend and the Invoice Koch public sale featured a number of plenty of the wine in several codecs.
Two plenty of six magnums fetched $187,500 a-piece (excessive e: $110,000), whereas a 600cl Imperial bottle offered for $87,500 (excessive e: $45,000).
Fellow Decanter legend Château Mouton Rothschild 1945 additionally featured strongly, 80 years since this ‘victory classic’ within the aftermath of the Second World Warfare. A four-bottle lot offered for $106,500, whereas a second lot fetched $87,500 (excessive e: $50,000 per lot).
Koch’s cellar additionally featured a group of Australian superb wines, together with Penfolds Grange spanning a number of a long time.
Six bottles of Grange 1971, the oldest classic of the wine up on the market, fetched $10,625 (excessive e: $7,00). A magnum of Henschke’s Hill of Grace 1984 additionally fetched $1,625 (excessive e: $900).
Invoice Koch stated of the sale, ‘I hope these wines that I’ve spent years gathering and curating will carry pleasure and nice reminiscences to their new house owners.’
Adam Bilbey, Christie’s world head of wine and spirits, stated, ‘Together with wines of unbelievable rarity, this magnificent choice attracted collectors of all ages from throughout the globe, and we had been delighted to see unbelievable competitors on-line on Christie’s Dwell, from the telephone and within the room for all the length of the three-day sale.’
Koch, who has an estimated internet price of round $2bn based on Forbes, has beforehand offered bottles from his cellar, notably in 2016.
As a collector, Koch can also be recognized for his relentless pursuit of counterfeiters. He was a witness for the prosecution within the trial of superb wine fraudster Rudy Kurniawan.
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