The Winery Colin Christine of Burgundy

A methuselah of Romanée-Conti 1976 from Burgundy’s vaunted Domaine de la Romanée-Conti was among the highlights in a two-day series of Sotheby’s wine and spirits auctions in Hong Kong last weekend. The six-litre bottle sold for HK$1.25m (US$159,350), against a pre-sale estimate range of HK$1m to HK$1.4m. In a separate spirits auction, a single bottle of Yamazaki 35 Year Old Japanese whisky fetched HK$1m (US$127,440). Rare white Burgundy was also in-demand during the weekend event. Top lot in a f ...

Liv-ex said the trade ‘is reporting strong sales’ of Burgundy 2020 wines following the first en primeur releases in recent weeks, despite higher prices. Decanter’s Charles Curtis MW rated Côte d’Or reds and whites highly in his Burgundy 2020 overview, published earlier this month. Liv-ex’s new Burgundy report also suggested that getting hold of some wines has become even more difficult. ‘The trade continues to report an insatiable global buying appetite that has led to reduced alloca ...

Last year, there was much mirth on wine Twitter about a particularly excruciating tasting note. You’re right. The wine trade needs to get out more. But still… this one was a beauty. It began well enough – really quite beautiful, in fact. But before long the imaginative descriptions were getting more ornate and strained. It moved from poetic to meaningless before finishing with a reference to Burnt Norton – the first of TS Eliot’s Four Quartets – that put it firmly in Private Eye magazine’s ...