Home > Articles > Collecting > Acker Merrall & Condit Auction Breaks World Record

Acker Merrall & Condit Auction Breaks World Record

House brings in nearly $24.7 million for single-owner cellar

Peter D. Meltzer

Posted: Tuesday, October 24, 2006

This past weekend, Acker Merrall & Condit shattered the world wine-auction record, bringing in a stunning $24.7 million worth of fine and rare wine at its two-day sale conducted at New York’s Café Gray restaurant. The previous record of $14.4 million was set at Sherry-Lehmann with Sotheby's "Millennium Sale" in November 1999.

The single-owner cellar was consigned by the same West Coast collector who sold $10.6 million worth of wine last January at Acker Merrall. Renowned for his discriminating taste and being a stickler for provenance, the consignor chose to remain anonymous to the public, even though he was well-known by many collectors in the salesroom and greeted them personally over the course of the event, held Oct. 20 and 21.

With an average price per lot of $10,686, this was clearly not a bottom-fisher's auction. A total of 24 lots surpassed the $100,000 mark, including a case of the celebrated DRC Romanée-Conti 1990, which sold for $161,325, 44 percent above the wine's first-half 2006 Wine Spectator Auction Index average. A dozen bottles of the classic Château Mouton-Rothschild 1945 sold for $155,350 (up 69 percent from its Auction Index average) and six magnums of Comte de Vogüé Vieilles Vignes 1962 at $149,375.

Standing at a podium overlooking Columbus Circle, auction director John Kapon fielded a litany of aggressive bids from the phone, the floor and the order book, and the event had a 94 percent sold rate. Several determined collectors in attendance appeared to have racked up purchases totaling in the seven-figure range.

Crazy as the prices sound, there aren't many opportunities to snap up a double magnum of Château Pétrus 1921 (for $47,800) or a jeroboam of Château Margaux 1900 (for $65,725).

Back to top

Currently on Wine Spectator Online:

• Tasting Highlights: Greece
  10 notable wines from some of Greece's top producers
• First Crush at Washington State University's New Research Lab
  School builds research winery and hires new director to give the Pacific Northwest its own top program
• Winemaker Talk: Giorgio Lavagna
  Old-school Piedmont winemaker joins Bruno Giacosa to take on Barolo, Barbaresco and other bottlings at the historic winery that's a favorite of collectors
• Yarra Valley Pioneer Dies
  Bailey Carrodus, iconoclastic founder of Australia's Yarra Yering winery, was 78
• Unfiltered: Playboy Bunnies Wrap Themselves Around Wine Bottles
  Plus, drinking wine to save the planet, Italians turn water into wine, French temperance extends to the postal system and a wine tribute to the late Bobby Fetzer