CHEERS

Taiwanese Billionaire to Auction Off ‘World’s Most Valuable Wine Collection’

A single bottle from the manufacturing magnate’s collection is expected to fetch up to $65,000.

Taiwanese billionaire Pierre Chen is auctioning off what is being called the most valuable wine collection ever sold—an eye-watering $50 million in rare burgundies, Bordeauxs, champagnes and more. The 25,000 bottles will be auctioned off in five sales over the course of a year by Sothebys, with each collection focusing on a different region. A single bottle—the 1982 Château Pétrus—is expected to garner as much as $65,000. Chen, an electronics manufacturing magnate who also owns art by the likes of Pablo Picasso and Gerhard Richter, acquired his expansive win collection over a 40-year period, and now has “more wine in his cellars than any one individual could ever hope to drink in a lifetime,” said George Lacey, Head of Sotheby’s Wine for Asia, adding: “But wine is for drinking.”