Hong Kong Wine Auction Expected to Raise $10 million

A sale of fine wines in Hong Kong in April will fetch up to a record $10 million as Asia enjoys a boom in wine collecting, auctioneer Sotheby's said Tuesday.

The sale of almost 11,000 bottles of French wine on April 2 and 3 from a single, anonymous collector, will be the highest-value wine auction ever held at Sotheby's Hong Kong, a spokesman said.

The auction includes a Chateau Lafite 1982 expected to fetch up to 65,000 US dollars a case and a case of Romanee-Conti 1990 predicted to go under the hammer for as much as 240,000 US dollars.

Hong Kong last year emerged as the world centre for wine auctions, outselling London and New York combined, according to Sotheby's and Christie's.

In January, wine owned by composer Andrew Lloyd Webber sold for 5.6 million US dollars in an auction by Sotheby's in Hong Kong, 1.5 million US dollars above the highest pre-auction estimate.

More than 60 per cent of the world's premier wines are now bought by Asian collectors at Hong Kong auctions. Experts believe Hong Kong residents own nearly a fifth of the world's rare and fine wines.

Serena Sutcliffe, worldwide head of wine at Sotheby's, said of the April sale, "This is the sort of extraordinary collection that one sees only a few times during one's life."