The source of the world’s most revered and expensive wine is unlikely to be sold but we can have a guess by using purported figures from the October 2017 sale of Clos de Tart to French billionaire François Pinault’s Groupe Artémis holding company, which also owns Château Latour and Christie’s.
Clos de Tart is 7.5 hectare Grand Cru vineyard in Morey-St-Denis. “Le Point” reported, “la somme mise pour acquérir ce bijou dépasserait allègrement les 200 millions d’euros” (“the sum put to acquire this jewel would happily exceed 200 million euros”).
Burgundy vineyards don’t come cheap. In May 2014, LVMH purchased Domaine des Lambrays lock, stock and barrique, which included the 8.7 hectare Grand Cru vineyard Clos des Lambrays, for €101 million, or €11,609,195 per hectare.
Assuming €200 million for Clos de Tart, it equates to €26,666,667 per hectare.
Clos de Tart 2002 retails in the UK for £635 or so per bottle.
The 2002 vintage of Romanée-Conti retails at £20,000 or so per bottle, equivalent to 31.49 bottles of Clos de Tart 2007.
Using the multiple of 31.49 applied to Clos de Tart’s per hectare price, Romanée-Conti’s nominal market value is €839,733,344 per hectare, or €1,368,765,351 for the entire 1.63 hectare vineyard.
That would be a big investment for a vineyard that produces only 5,000 or so bottles per year.
If you assumed a not unreasonable 10-year ROI, then a bottle of Romanée-Conti would have to be sold ex-cellars at €27,375 – and that’s gross, without the costs included…
