Top 5 Most Expensive Bottles of Wine In History

Ancient Bottles of Wine

Good wine depends on the wine's ingredients and the growing condition of grapes. In recent years bottles wines from some of the best Chateaux and wineries across the world have sold for astronomical prices, with others, despite selling more than 20 year’s ago, still holding their own among the top 10.

The List of Top 5 Most Expensive Bottles of Wine Of All Time

5. CHATEAU MARGAUX 1787 | $225,000

4. CHATEAU LAFITE’S 1869 | $230,000

3. SHIPWRECKED 1907 HEIDSIECK | $275,000

2. 1947 CHEVAL-BLANC | $304,375

1. SCREAMING EAGLE CABERNET SAUVIGNON 1992 | $500,000

What are the most costly bottles of wine in history?

5. CHATEAU MARGAUX 1787 | $225,000

Not so much a sale, as an unfortunate insurance claim, but an interesting tale to include in our list nonetheless. In 1989 New York wine merchant, William Sokolin, valued a 1987 bottle of Château Margaux, also from Thomas Jefferson’s collection, at $500,000. But before the collector could test his valuation on the market disaster struck. Having taken the bottle with him to the Four Seasons for dinner one evening, a waiter knocked it over smashing it to pieces. Insurers later paid out $225,000, making it the most expensive bottle never sold, according to Thedrinksbusiness.

4. CHATEAU LAFITE’S 1869 | $230,000

Though estimated to sell for up to $60K each, the Chateau Lafite’s 1869 bidding war for the rare vintage resulted in a $230,000 for a standard sized bottle available at a Sotheby’s auction in Hong Kong in 2010. Though ancient, the wine was known to the collector who acquired all three of the three available 1869 bottles for a total of $690,000. This is the most anyone has been willing to pay for a standard sized bottle of vino, and the owner can slowly relish drinking the first two bottles while keeping the third to the envy of all, according to NewYorkWineEvents.

3. SHIPWRECKED 1907 HEIDSIECK | $275,000

Imagine sipping from a flute containing the precious liquid that was until recently trapped in a sunken ship under the sea. That is exactly the story that one of the world’s most expensive champagnes, the 1907 Shipwrecked Heidsieck, has to offer.

It was during the first World War that Tsar Nicholas II of Russia, commissioned a Swedish freighter to deliver wine and of course the 1907 Heidsieck champagne. It was 1916 and in the midst of World War I when a German submarine hit the freighter.The ship and its precious cargo were hereby sentenced to remain under the sea.

It would be 80 years or so before the shipwreck would be found and its contents reclaimed. Salvaged off the coast of Finland in 1998, the bottles of champagne were to be sold at auction and would fetch astronomical prices.

The 1907 Shipwrecked Heidsieck became one of the world’s most expensive bottles of champagne when it went to action in Russia. Sold at one auction held at the Ritz Carlton in Moscow, one bottle of champagne went for $275,000.

The history, age and of course the intriguing tale of the bottle aided in pushing its value to this level. Total there were 2000 bottles of spirits recovered from the wreckage.

While all sold at high to record prices, the 1907 Heidsieck fetched the highest price and title of one of the word’s most expensive bottles of champagne, according to WindermerePremier.

2. 1947 CHEVAL-BLANC | $304,375 (£192,000)*

This merlot enjoys the status of being one of only two wines that have been given the Class A status in the Classification of Saint-Emilion wine.

An imperial bottle of 1947 Cheval Blanc was sold at auction for £192,000 ($304,375) in November 2010, setting a world record for the most expensive single bottle of wine ever sold at auction.

That price tag makes it only the second most expensive wine in our ranking!

The 67-year-old bottle, which is also the only known bottle in the Imperial format from this particular Saint-Emilion vintage, was sold to a private collector at Christie’s, Geneva, smashing the auction house’s estimated price of between $150,000 and $200,000, reported by Alux.

1. SCREAMING EAGLE CABERNET SAUVIGNON 1992 | $500,000*

The most expensive wine ever sold is the exception to the dated rule of rare wine, as it was not even a decade old at the time of purchase; the six liter Screaming Eagle Cabernet Sauvignon 1992 bottle sold for a whopping half a million bucks (that’s right, folks, $500,000) in 2000 at a Napa Valley charity auction! It was only available for a limited time in 1995, and apparently was the cat’s meow, at least to one wine connoisseur out there, because it is rumored Chase Bailey, a former Cisco Systems executive, picked this up, though we have an asterisk* here (unlike Major League Baseball’s home run record book), because the $500K bottle was knocked down a bit in price because it was a charity sale, although it could still have sold for more than any other wine in history.

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