30 Oct October ’26 Post-Auction and Market Report
Starting with our headline live auction, October was another busy month for us at The Wine Auction Room, featuring two other online auctions and the buy-now event which follows each live auction:
October Rare & Fine Wine Live Auction (Tues 6 Oct)
October Rare & Fine Wine Buy Now (Weds 7 Oct)
Single Vendor Auction – The Cellar of Two Passionate Collectors (Weds 14 – Mon 19 Oct)
Pinot Envy Reduced Fees Auction (Weds 21 – Mon 26 Oct)
Over this period we closed on 678 bottles across 495 lots with 25 sales of $1000 or more per bottle.
Our top five sales for October 2026 were:
1999 Leroy Richebourg Grand Cru at $9987.50
2018 Domaine Armand Rousseau Chambertin Clos-de-Beze Grand Cru 1500ml at $7637.50
2013 Domaine Armand Rousseau Chambertin Clos-de-Beze Grand Cru 1500ml at $7637.50
2018 Domaine Armand Rousseau Chambertin Grand Cru at $3760
2015 Domaine du Comte Liger Belair Clos Vougeot Grand Cru at $3525
We are extremely grateful to our community of buyers for helping us achieve strong results for our vendors with over 11% of sales achieving or surpassing high estimate.
New Zealand
Just over a quarter of our sales for October were of wines from New Zealand with our very top sale being for a bottle of 2016 Bell Hill Single Parcel Limeworks Chardonnay which sold for $517, we also saw a bottle of Bell Hill’s Estate Chardonnay sell for a Wine Auction Room record price with two bottles of the 2017 vintage selling at $411.25 per bottle.
These were followed by other 750ml bottles from Bell Hill, Kusuda, Destiny Bay and Stonyridge plus a magnum of 2005 Te Mata Coleraine, all selling at $200 or more per bottle. As well as these top sales, we saw a wide variety of New Zealand wines selling at or above our high estimates. These include three vintages of Felton Road Block 1 Rielsing alongside their Estate and Cornish Point Pinot Noirs; Te Mata Bullnose Syrah and Elston Chardonnay, Pinot Noir from Ata Rangi and Pyramid Valley, Chardonnay from Novum and Martinborough Vineyards, and eight bottles of Le Petit Point (across two lots), the declassified 2016 vintage of Te Whau’s The Point Bordeaux Blend.
Felton Road is an interesting case here, in the past year we have seen strong market support for their flagship Blocks 3 and 5 Pinot Noirs and while these wines still sold well in October, they were outperformed by the ‘value buys’ from the producer. The estate Pinot had four of five sales between $90 and $100 per bottle (for context, the 2025 vintage was recently released at $71) and the Cornish Point bottling had six sales for recent vintages between $106 and $141 (the 2025 was released at $87). Likewise, Block 1 Riesling continues the strong performance we’ve seen throughout 2026 with all three listings for this wine selling well over high estimate, between $65 and $76 per bottle (unlike the Pinots this is a mailing-list only wine with the current 2025 vintage recently released at $51).
Australia
Australian wine represented 6% of our October sales and it was all red: Cabernet, Shiraz and Shiraz / Cabernet (and vice versa). Our top sales were for Penfolds Grange (a 2000 vintage Magnum at $1292.50 and a 750ml of 2017 at $587.50. We also saw strong returns for icon wines from the mid 90’s: ‘94 Houghton Jack Mann Cabernet, ‘96 Penfolds Bin 389 and Bin 407 all selling above high estimates, joined by ‘94 Wynns Michael Shiraz, 1992 Yalumba Octavius and 1993 Cullen Diana Madeline achieving hammer prices of $120 or more.
Germany
While we only had a handful of sales (9 in total) we saw over half of these achieve high estimate or above including four wines with reserves of $40 or less (albeit from acclaimed producers including Willi Schaefer, Donnhoff and Dr Loosen).
Itay
Italy represented around 8% of our sales in October with the very top sale being for a jeroboam of 2000 Ornellaia which sold at $1410. It was followed by some exceptional Barolo from G.B. Burlotto, Giacomo Conterno, Bartolo Masarello, Guissepe Rinaldi and Gaja all selling in-and-around the $500 a bottle mark. There was significant interest in wines from G.B. Burlotto with a 2013 Monvigliero Cru selling at $681.50, 17.5% above high estimates.
France
72% of October’s sales were of the wines of France with our top sales heavily dominated by the aforementioned Grand Cru Red Burgundy from producers including Leroy, Rousseau, Comte Liger Belair, J.F. Mugnier and de Vogüé. In fact, only three of 23 sales over $1000 a bottle or more were for wines other than Red Burgundy; these included two bottles of ‘03 Lafite which sold at $1410 each (again, well above high estimate) as well as 2010 Batard Montrachet Grand Cru from Etienne Sauzet and 2016 Meursault Perrierers 1er Cru from Pierre-Yves Colin Morey.
As well as the ‘03 Lafite we saw strong results for a diverse range of wines including Bordeaux from Brane-Cantenac, Domaine de Chevalier, La Fleur Petrus, Pagodes de Cos, Pape Clement and Bordeaux Blanc (2020 Chateau Mouton Rothschild Aile d’Argent), Chateauneuf from Beaucastel and Burgundy (white and red) from producers like Pierre Morey, Henri Boillot, Denis Bachelet and Boisson Charles.
Interestingly Bordeaux and Burgundy were neck and neck in terms of volume with each category representing around 38% of French wine sales (or 27% of overall sales) however due to the number of Grand Crus that went under the hammer, Burgundy sales eclipsed Bordeaux in dollar value just over 3:1.
International Markets News
Millennial and Gen Z Buyers flock to high-end Hong Kong Auction
While we rarely report on individual auctions this news from Drinks Business is indicative of trends we are also starting to see here in New Zealand. Earlier this month Christies held a white-glove single vendor auction in Hong Kong, raising over $50m HK, about $11m NZD. While this in itself made headlines the most interesting piece of news was that Christies reported that “almost half of the buyers were Millennials and Generation Z collectors” with the majority of these (around 70%) buying at auction for the very first time.
The Top Performing Fine Wines of the Past Year
Likewise, Hong Kong-based fine wine merchant Vinum have just published a breakdown of the Liv-Ex Fine Wine 1000 performance over the past year, outlining the top performers.
For context, Liv-Ex describes the Fine Wine 1000 as the “ broadest measure of the market,” tracking 1000 wines from across the world.
Could there be a ‘fine wine’ shortage?
Drinks Business is reporting that their Bordeaux correspondent Colin Hay (who also happens to be Professor of Political Science at Paris’ research-led Po Sciences University and editor in chief of New Political Economy) is predicting a ‘fine wine’ shortage in the next few years. Ultimately this is for a range of reasons: institutional investment in fine wine as an economic hedge, climate change and reduced overall supply due to wineries lowering production in response to dropping consumption:
“We used to worry most about demand. Now, in a sense, it’s supply that’s falling more rapidly… We’re entering a new period in which people drink less, but what they drink might at some point stabilise. If that happens, and even if it doesn’t, we reach a point – and some of the négociants have started to model this a little bit – in 2028 and 2029, where there is less supply than there is demand for fine wine.”
Looking ahead…
|We only have a handful of auctions left for 2026 but there is also no better time to have a look through your cellar for bottles that you no longer want to drink or that you can no longer justify drinking. We have an incredible 2027 planned with new auction formats and more community events planned. If you would like to consign with us in the coming months, please get in touch by emailing [email protected]
Likewise (and sorry for harping on about this) but we have had an incredibly warm spring with more of the same forecast for the coming months, followed by an extremely warm el niño summer. Temperature controlled storage is far and away the best way to protect the value and condition of your wine. Regardless of whether it is a case of something very special in our community cellar or an entire collection in one of our Magnum (50+ dozen) or Jeroboam (120+ dozen) lockers, you should cellaring at the Wine Storage Room, our purpose-built temperature controlled, secure wine storage facility. Not only do we offer 24-7 access close to downtown Auckland but we have multiple redundancies (and everything is at ground level so you don’t need to lug boxes up and down ladders and stairs).
If you’re looking for a storage solution for home, we also have an older (but still going strong) wine fridge available for sale.
