Is Asia’s Wine Boom Stalling?
By: Jason Chow
Last weekend, Christie’s accomplished a rare feat: It held a wine auction in Hong Kong that didn’t sell out. In fact, only 68% of the lots on offer sold.
That’s a stark contrast to the string of record-breaking auctions in recent months, in which bottles of top Bordeaux and Burgundy fetched astronomical prices. Just the week before, in fact, rival Sotheby’s held a three-day wine sale in Hong Kong that was 100% sold — its 15th-consecutive 100%-sold auction in Asia, a streak going back to 2009.
The Christie’s sale, a special 36-hour two-continent event — the marathon auction began in Hong Kong, was passed over to New York and then concluded back in Hong Kong — showed diverging results. In the U.S., 96% of the lots on offer sold, a better rate than in Hong Kong and a sign of a comeback of sorts in the U.S. wine market, which was hurt by the global financial crisis.
Needless to say, Christie’s executives are putting a positive spin on things. “It was a bit surprising,” admitted Charles Curtis, head of wine, Christie’s Asia. “We had some aggressive estimates, maybe a bit optimistic, but we had wines that had excellent provenance and we believed in it. Does this mark the end of the trend? Nothing close to that — it’s just a bump in road.”
Mr. Curtis added that the most-expensive bottles purchased in recent sales were bought by a tiny handful of Chinese buyers, most of whom weren’t present at the Hong Kong auction last weekend.
Doug Rumsam, managing director of the Hong Kong wine merchant Bordeaux Index, said that the Christie’s auction results “came as a surprise.”
“We haven’t seen any dip in our business…. Demand is still strong,” he said. “I’ve always wondered if the auction houses would continue at this pace unless they could keep regenerating their audience. If not, it was bound to slow down eventually. You don’t just continue spending at the rate some of these guys have been spending. After a year or so of buying very heavily, many [buyers] have completed their cellars and are now very selective.”
In total value of wine sold, the Hong Kong portion of the Christie’s sale outdid the New York portion by a large margin, $8.2 million to $3 million, including the buyers premiums. (That was for 1,016 lots in Hong Kong, 804 in New York.)
And Hong Kong was site of costliest lot sold: 60 bottles of Chateau Mouton Rothschild Bordeaux, one for each vintage between 1945 and 2005, except for 1946. The auction house said a Latin American collector bought it for $123,456, buyers premium included.
http://blogs.wsj.com/scene/2011/04/13/is-asias-wine-boom-stalling/?mod=google_news_blog
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