WORLD
World`s oldest bubbly sells for $73k
Baku, June 4 (AZERTAC). Two bottles of the world`s oldest champagne, which spent about 170 years at the bottom of the ocean, sold for 54,000 euros ($73,700) at an auction in Finland on Friday.
The second lot, containing vintage Veuve, fetched 30,000 euros, which the auction house - New York-based wine specialist Acker Merrall & Condit - said was the most paid for a bottle.
“The important thing for this event is that this was a world record for an auction,” Richard Juhlin, an authority on champagne, said in an interview after the event. “I`m a little surprised the bidding didn`t go higher. If you had speculators bidding against each other, it could have sky rocketed.”
Collectors have been paying higher prices for champagne, especially for prized vintages, said Juhlin, who had forecast that the bottles might fetch 100,000 euros, 10 times the minimum price of 10,000 euros. Bidders applauded at the Veuve price, given by the same Singapore-based internet bidder who minutes before gave 24,000 euros for a bottle of Juglar.
The bottles were sold in Mariehamn, capital of Aaland, a Finnish-controlled archipelago of 6,500 islands in the Baltic Sea, where divers discovered the precious cargo in a previously unknown shipwreck.
“This is truly a historic event,” Stephane Baschiera, president of Veuve Clicquot, said in a statement before the sale. “We have worked closely with the government of Aaland since the discovery of the shipwreck to help salvage and protect the precious wines, which we know now were tasted by Madame Clicquot herself.”
The auctioneer didn`t charge a premium, Truly Hardy, Acker Merrall`s director of auction operations, said at the event in the Culture and Congress House Alandica.
About 145 bottles were found intact, including Veuve Clicquot, Heidsieck - today made by Vranken-Pommery Monopole - and Juglar, which became part of Jacquesson. Veuve also offered 15 rare bottles from its own cellars and was a partner in the sale.
Acker Merrall said the top price, equivalent to $40,500, beat the $39,850 paid for a bottle of 1959 Dom Perignon Rose in April 2008.