Anthony Pierpont Wine in the News: 1945 Chateau Mouton-Rothschild Auction

A prized vintage Bordeaux goes up for sale at a rare wine auction on April 21. The 1945 Chateau Mouton-Rothschild is expected to bring in a whopping $60,000. Edward Roberts International and Sam’s Wines & Spirits, a Chicago-based wine store, will be running the auction and pre-auction bids are already up to almost $30,000.

The rare wine auction is for a jeroboam of Bordeaux, a super-sized bottle of wine that holds the equivalent of six bottles of wine.

Some notes about vintage Bordeaux wines:

• Last September, at a Christie's auction in Los Angeles, a case (12 bottles) of the 1945 Chateau Mouton Rothschild sold for $290,000, and a six-magnum case of the same wine sold for $345,000. Clearly, in the “case” of wine, size does matter, and the estimated price for the jeroboam might be a little low.
• There are no guarantees about how the vintage Bordeaux wine was stored. It’s entirely possible that at some point, the wine was exposed to sunlight, motion or warm temperatures that make it undrinkable today. The only comparable gamble is putting $60,000 down on red at the roulette tables in Vegas.
• The 1945 Chateau Mouton Rothschild is well-known to wine collectors for the V on its label, indicating Victory at the end of WWII.

In my next blog, I’ll talk more about investment wines, and how to size up your wine options before you buy.

Anthony Pierpont Wine Tip of the Day: Check out more online rare wine auctions at Wine Bid and Hart Davis Hart.