Romanée-Conti 1945, for those who know scarcity has a price

I love wine for the table, not for the spreadsheet. But a wine collector who ignores the market ends up paying too much, or selling too cheaply. So twice a year I sit down with the numbers.

This autumn they tell a story that starts with one bottle.

The most expensive bottle in history

At Acker's La Paulée auction in New York, at the end of March, a single 750 ml bottle of 1945 Domaine de la Romanée-Conti sold for US$812,500. It is the highest price ever paid for a bottle of wine at auction.

The previous record, US$558,000, was set in 2018 for another bottle of the same wine. The record bottle came from the cellar of Robert Drouhin, of the great Burgundy family. The whole sale made more than US$25 million, with 460 records according to Acker.

Why 1945? Because it was the last vintage of the old, ungrafted Romanée-Conti vines before the domaine pulled them out, and because only about 600 bottles were made. Scarcity, history and an extraordinary vintage. That is the formula.

The market, after two hard years

Fine wine prices fell for most of 2024 and 2025. In September 2026, according to the Vinum Fine Wine Market Report of October, the Liv-ex Fine Wine 100 rose 1.1 percent, the clearest sign so far that the market is stabilising.

Even more telling, the bid to offer ratio reached 1.13, its highest level since October 2022. In plain words: there are more people wanting to buy than to sell.

The same report highlights two sales. Sotheby's sold a cellar of Château Haut Brion for €3.4 million. And Christie's in Hong Kong sold the collection of Henry Tang for £4.8 million, with nearly half of the buyers belonging to the Millennial or Gen Z generations. Trade in pre 2011 Bordeaux rose 50 percent in value quarter on quarter in the third quarter.

The big groups

On the corporate side, LVMH reported organic growth of 5 percent in Wines and Spirits for the first nine months of 2026, and 6 percent in the third quarter. The houses that make the wines people collect are feeling the floor too.

Curious facts

• Romanée-Conti itself is a vineyard of under two hectares. In 1945, from vines that were about to be pulled out, it gave almost nothing.
• A bottle's provenance can be worth as much as its label. "Ex domaine" or "ex cellar" means it never left the producer's or the family's cellar, and buyers pay a large premium for that certainty.
• The Henry Tang result matters for that reason: a new generation is arriving at the top of the wine market, and it is buying at auction.

What it means for a Portuguese cellar

Portugal has its own scarce, ancient wines, and they are still far less expensive than great Burgundy. Old Single Harvest Tawnies and very old Ports from the great houses are made in tiny quantities, with decades of history in each bottle. I wrote this week about Graham's 1979 and Taylor's VVOP White. Both are the Portuguese answer to the question "what is rare?".

In Lisbon, Garrafeira Nacional in the Baixa is the reference for old Portuguese bottles. In Gaia, the lodges of the great Port houses sell their limited releases directly.

My take

I do not buy wine as an investment, and I would not advise anyone to. Wine is the only asset that disappears when you enjoy it. That is the point.

But I read these numbers with pleasure. They say the market is healthy again, that young collectors are arriving, and that real scarcity is still rewarded. A bottle of 1945 Romanée-Conti is the extreme case. The same logic applies to a great old tawny on a shelf in Gaia.

For those who know scarcity has a price, the lesson is simple. Buy what is rare, buy it with provenance, and open it with people who deserve it.