Should I Sell My Wine in Hong Kong? A Question Pondered

Following the worst flight delays of my life (46 hours at JFK, over $200 in food vouchers, mountains of trail mix consumed) I landed in Hong Kong sleep deprived, malnourished, and ready to see what all the hubbub is about.

Anyone who follows the wine auction market knows that prices have sky rocketed for certain wines making, in a very short time, Hong Kong the world’s wine auction leader. The demand is huge, the potential endless. Hong Kong is the place to sell your wine in 2011. Or is it?

I found myself wondering this as I helped put together our March Hong Kong sale, an 800-lot, $10 million giant titled: Finest and Rarest Wines Featuring Treasures from a Connoisseur and The Vintage Wine Fund. This sale is tailor-made for the Hong Kong market. It has Bordeaux. Lots of Bordeaux. Almost all of it first growths, super seconds, or the top right bank wines. Pick up the results from a Christie's wine sale and you’ll see that this is where the demand is. That shouldn’t be any great shock—the demand has always been in Bordeaux, not only in Hong Kong, but at all of our sale sites.

Hong Kong is unique because it’s a nascent market, at least compared to London, where they’ve been having wine auctions for a few hundred years. 150 years ago, Hong Kong looked like this. I don’t think they were having wine auctions atop their junks on the sail to Kowloon. But now, partly because it’s new (and for a myriad of other reasons) the demand is great, and it’s the greatest for classic Bordeaux. Beyond Bordeaux, there’s also a demand for the top wines of Burgundy, i.e. the usual suspects of DRC, Rousseau, Roumier. We’re also seeing an increased interest in the pleasures of aged wine. My Hong Kong-based colleague Francesco has written about the importance of ageing that case of 2005 DRC before cracking a bottle over a meal of xing long bao. Because of this increased interest, we felt it was time to offer up one of the most extensive collections of pre-war DRC I’ve seen in some time (that’s the “Treasures” portion of our title). Stay tuned for the catalog or contact us for a sneak peek, if you’re interested.

Which brings me back to my original question: should you sell your wine in Hong Kong? That depends on what your wine is. We get emails and calls all of the time from people who have heard about the market surge and want to cash in. But if your wine collection isn’t made up of solid cases of blue-chip Bordeaux and Burgundy, selling in Hong Kong probably isn’t the best way to maximize your value. Certain wines are better suited to a market that is more familiar with them. It’s important to remember that maximizing your value isn’t about chasing a trend. It’s about figuring out the best sale site for your particular collection. One of the greatest things about working for a truly international auction house is that, regardless of where the auction is, we can tailor a sale to your collection’s needs.