Winemaker’s final batch sold for $35m
GENEVA — The last batch of late legendary winemaker Henri Jayer’s Burgundies — which include some of the world’s most expensive wines — was sold for a mouthwatering 30 million euros ($35 million) in Geneva on Sunday, well in excess of the estimated price.
In all, 1,064 bottles went under the hammer at the Baghera Wines auction at a gourmet restaurant in Geneva.
They included Cros-Parantoux Vosne-Romanee Premier Cru, which ranks among the world’s priciest wines.
“Everything was sold and each one of the lots was extremely well bid” in an auction that lasted six and a half hours, said Emilie Drouin, spokeswoman for the Baghera Wines auction house.
The 855 standard bottles and 209 magnums, dating from between 1970 and 2001, were from the personal wine cellar of the man broadly considered the king of the Pinot Noir variety of grape.
Originally, their estimated price had been set at between $6.7 million and $13 million.
“These bottles and magnums from his personal reserve were a bit like his laboratory ... A way to see his vintage wines age over the years,” his daughters Lydie and Dominique Jayer wrote in an email before the sale.
“It was natural for us, since we could not drink all of these bottles, to offer them up for sale so that wine lovers ... could buy them and drink them, in his honor,” they said.
The daughters were present at the auction.
Frenchman Henri Jayer, who died in 2006 at the age of 84, established a name for himself in the 1970s, when specialized reviews ranked his wines among the best in the world.
Over the years, he became “the emblem of the Burgundy in the eyes of the public”, said Swiss wine critic, who knew Jayer personally.
A Henri Jayer wine has “all the grace of the Pinot, the slenderness, the structure, the aromatic finesse. He did everything to preserve that”, he said.
It is this quality that has made Jayer’s wines some of the most sought after in the wine world — and brought them their sometimes astronomical price tags.
Jayer’s daughters, meanwhile, hope the bottles’ new owners will not just leave them in their cellars to gather dust and value.
“We hope they will go into the cellars of wine lovers who know how to open and drink these wines,” they said.
“Let’s not forget that wine is synonymous with sharing, and these wines were above all made to be drunk and enjoyed.”