A record has been broken for the most expensive bottle of wine sold

A bottle of wine has made history after selling for a record-breaking $812,500 (£614,814) at auction in New York, setting a new benchmark for collectors and connoisseurs.

The bottle, a 1945 Domaine de la Romanée-Conti, was sold last weekend at the annual La Paulée auction hosted by Acker, widely regarded as the world’s largest fine wine auction house and America’s oldest wine merchant.

The sale took place on Manhattan’s Upper West Side and drew leading buyers from across the globe.

The extraordinary result surpasses the previous world record for a bottle of wine sold at auction, which was set in 2018 when another bottle of the same vintage fetched $558,000.

The latest figure marks an increase of nearly 50 per cent, underlining the growing appetite for rare and historically significant wines among elite collectors.

Acker described the sale as a landmark moment in the world of fine wine.

In a statement, the auction house said the price “cements the 1945 vintage as the most coveted bottle in the history of wine collecting”.

John Kapon, chairman of Acker, told Business Wire : “We made history this weekend.

I’ve had the privilege of tasting the 1945 Romanée-Conti just three times in my life, and it is the greatest wine I’ve ever tasted.”
He added that the auction reflected “the soul and spirit of Burgundy”, bringing together some of the world’s top producers and collectors and creating the ideal conditions for a “truly historic result”.

While the identity of the buyer has not been disclosed, Acker confirmed the bottle was sourced from the personal cellar of Robert Drouhin, one of Burgundy’s most respected figures, who led the Maison Joseph Drouhin wine house for nearly half a century.

The 1945 vintage holds a near-mythical status in the wine world.

It was the last produced before the Romanée-Conti estate replanted its oldest vines, which had survived both world wars.

Production that year was exceptionally limited, with only around 600 bottles believed to have been made.

Adding to its allure, the wine is classified as “pre-phylloxera”, meaning the grapes were grown on vines not engineered to resist phylloxera - the insect that devastated vast swathes of European vineyards in the late 19th century.

Wines from such vines are often regarded as exceptionally rare.