A 240-year-old bottle of Vin Jaune will be auctioned next month with a £30,000 estimated hammer price.
Vin Jaune: as enjoyed by Pasteur?
The rare single bottle of 1774 Vin Jaune from France’s Jura region is expected to sell for between £27,220 and £34,025 (SFr.40,000-50,000) when it goes under the hammer next month at a Christie’s auction in Geneva.
A traditional wine of the Jura region, located between Burgundy and Switzerland, this 87-centilitre bottle was part of a batch which had been kept intact for eight generations in a vaulted underground cellar in Arbois, the capital of Jura wines and the birthplace of the creator of modern oenology, Louis Pasteur.
According to the Christie’s catalogue, legend has it that Pasteur enjoyed a bottle in 1882 from the same batch to celebrate his admittance to the Académie Française.
‘Made to last centuries when of good quality, and nicknamed “the wine of kings and the king of wines”, this bottle of Vin Jaune is probably the oldest unfortified example of what is to be still an astounding wine and another true rarity for wine lovers and connoisseurs,’ said Michael Ganne, head of the Christie’s Geneva wine sale, which is scheduled for 15 May.
The bottle will be sold among some other noteworthy wines, including a batch of Chateau Mouton-Rothschild from 1945 and a 12-bottle lot of Domaine de la Romanée-Conti La Tâche 1959.
Written by Panos Kakaviatos
