And the lots are unsurprisingly exceptional.
If you’ve been keeping up with Lewis Chester’s explorations into the fine wine world here, your expectations of his cellar – curated over many years, and pictured above – will be pretty lofty. And you’d be right: a glance at what’s on offer in the sale of a small portion of his collection by Sotheby’s Wines (which announced a new multi-year partnership with The Golden Vines® Awards and the Gérard Basset Foundation, both co-founded by Chester, earlier this year) makes for mouth-watering reading.
With an estimated total value of more than £1 million, the 776-lot sale includes 251 lots of Burgundy alone, including bottles from the great Burgundy Domaines – Rousseau, Dujac, Roumier, de Vogüé, Leflaive, Raveneau and Dauvissat – as well as more accessible but equally high quality Domaines such as Rossignol-Trapet, Lignier-Michelot and Follin-Arbelet.
As for Champagne, the sale boasts 91 lots of Krug and Dom Pérignon from the very rare Clos of d’Ambonnay and du Mesnil to P3 vintages and large formats. Also perfect as the mercury rises are the double magnums of Krug Rosé on offer. A further 70 lots include the finest cuvées of Vilmart, Philipponnat and Pol Roger, among others.
From Bordeaux, we have first-growth bottlings of Lafite, Latour and Margaux plus Haut-Brion Blanc representing the Left Bank, with the the Right Bank supplying agonisingly rare double-magnums of Le Pin and magnums of Lafleur. The Rhône is comprehensively covered with produce from the very best producers: from Rayas to Chave via Guigal, Clape and Rostaing.
Those who love Piedmont’s finest will find Barolo and Barbaresco from long established masters such as Giacosa, G. Rinaldi, Bartolo Mascarello, Conterno, Gaja and countless others. There’s also fine wine from the Loire and Mosel valleys, Tuscany, Switzerland and Santa Cruz Mountains, with offerings from Clos Rougeard, Markus 3 Molitor, Sassicaia, Gantenbein and Ridge Vineyards plus numerous others also in the line-up.
“As a collector, I began – like most fine wine lovers and collectors – buying Bordeaux En Primeur,” Chester explains of his remarkable collection. “Within a few years, I’d developed a taste for Champagne and Burgundy – after all, as I like to say, ‘All roads lead to Burgundy.’ However, once I started studying wine, my interests in fine wine became fairly broad. I’d been collecting the top wines from Bordeaux, Burgundy, Champagne, Tuscany and Piedmont for a number of years, but now my interests extended to California, Australia, the Rhône Valley, the Loire Valley, the Alsace and the Mosel Valley.
“Provenance has always been of utmost importance to me,” he continues. “Today, my collection is far too big to contemplate consuming it all, although I have been giving it a good crack! Furthermore, I own some incredible wines in large quantities, making it perfect sense for me to let some of these become available for other fine wine lovers to enjoy.”
All bottles in the collection have been purchased either directly from the respective Domaines via allocation, or from reputable UK merchants, then carefully cellared in professional temperature-controlled storage.
The online-only auction of The Cellar of Lewis Chester/The Inaugural Selection/No Reserve will close for bidding on 1st June at 10am
Click here to find out more or to bid.
