Romanée-Conti’s La Tâche 1945 doubles its estimate in Bonhams’ €1m Paris wine sales

Among the photographs Bonhams released with its results, the most telling one has no price attached. In a vaulted cellar in Morey-Saint-Denis, one man lifts a glass pipette of young wine to the light while the other leans in to judge its colour. They are Hubert and Laurent Lignier. The image explains the Paris sales better than any price list: fine wine at auction is now sold as much on its chain of custody as on what is in the glass, and the shortest chain runs straight from the grower’s cellar to the saleroom.

Three live sales at Bonhams’ Avenue Hoche saleroom passed the million-euro mark, with Domaine de la Romanée-Conti dominating the top results. Amayès Aouli, Bonhams’ global head of wine and spirits, reduced it to one word, trust. “Collectors responded enthusiastically to the depth, quality and impeccable provenance of an offering built around this essential value,” he said in the announcement.

The Lignier sale was consigned directly by the family estate, whose flagship has always been Clos de la Roche. The family farms roughly one hectare of the grand cru, split between the Monts Luisants and Les Fremières climats, with vines between 60 and 70 years old. The estate has passed from father to son since the late nineteenth century; Laurent now runs it. Many lots came with annual allocations and private tastings at the estate, so buyers were bidding on access as well as bottles. The two top lots were three-vintage verticals of Clos de la Roche, 1982, 1986 and 1989, and 1991, 1993 and 1999, each sold for €6,820 against an estimate of €4,000 to €6,000.

Bottles of Romanée-Conti 2005, a large-format Grands Échézeaux, La Romanée, Griotte-Chambertin and Clos de la Roche — Image: Bonhams

The second sale, Wine Excellence from an Impeccable European Cellar – Part II, was a white-glove result: every lot found a buyer, for a total of roughly €540,000. A 12-bottle Domaine de la Romanée-Conti assortment case from 2001, one of Burgundy’s great vintages of the century, made €52,080, and 12 bottles of Comte Liger-Belair’s La Romanée 2006 reached €37,200 against an estimate of €22,000 to €28,000. The sharpest leap came from the Loire: 12 magnums of Didier Dagueneau’s Silex 2000, the Pouilly-Fumé on which the late vigneron built his name, sold for €14,880, three times the top estimate. Two bottles of Domaine d’Auvenay’s Chevalier-Montrachet 2003, from a 0.16-hectare parcel that yielded around 320 bottles that year, brought €17,360.

The day closed with two private collections centred on Romanée-Conti, with mixed cases spanning the 2006 to 2022 vintages and several lots from Domaine Leroy, for a total of €489,862 and 95% of lots sold. Assortment cases from 2015 (€55,800), 2014 and 2017 (€49,600 each) led the money.

A bottle of Domaine de la Romanée-Conti La Tâche 1945 against a deep red backdrop — Image: Bonhams

The lot the room watched was a single bottle of La Tâche 1945. In the house’s photograph the label is cracked straight through the domaine’s name while the “Monopole 1945” neck label is still crisp: an object that has visibly lived eight decades. It sold for €34,720, more than double its pre-sale estimate. Across the three sales, the day totalled €1,029,361.

An online Bordeaux sale from Bonhams Cornette de Saint Cyr runs until Thursday 12 November, but the image to keep from Avenue Hoche is the one from Morey-Saint-Denis, two men and a pipette, the provenance that collectors paid for all day.

Tags: Bonhams, wine auctions, Burgundy wines, Didier Dagueneau, Domaine de la Romanée-Conti, Domaine Hubert Lignier