19 Dec The Wine Auction Room 2025 Year in Review
Looking back on 2025, what we’re most proud of is not just the results, though delivering strong returns for our vendors in a challenging market really does matter. It’s the people. Welcoming new buyers into the fold, reconnecting long-time collectors with wines they love, and watching this community grow in confidence, curiosity, and generosity. That’s the real measure of the year for us. – Reece Warren, Managing Director, The Wine Auction Room
With 2025 coming to an end, we thought we’d take a moment to look back on the year at The Wine Auction Room including taking a look at the most popular wines and styles, exciting new trends we’ve seen and give you a sneak peek at what is happening in 2026.
This isn’t one of our traditional market reports, instead it’s a look at the wines you’ve shared with friends or added to your cellar. Think of it more like a Spotify Wrapped, but for wine… we even have the visuals to match…
2025 in a word… BUSY!
2025 was our busiest year ever. We hosted 30 auctions (that’s one every 12 days) and offered a hugely varied selection of wines. As well as our bi-monthly Live Auctions and our regular Rare & Fine Online auctions we also added several more focused specialist auctions to our rotations including Fine Wine from the 09 (Auckland), Bastille Day (France), The Italian Job (Italy) and more… expect to see more of these in 2026 starting with a joint Australia Day / Auckland Anniversary Auction starting on Wednesday 21 January.
The name of the game is… DIVERSITY!
We sold wines from no fewer than 16 countries (and at least one from every winegrowing continent) as well as spirits and liqueurs from over a dozen different countries.
Top Trends for 2025:
1) There is a growing demand for a wider range of wine styles.
As you can see above, there is strong buyer interest in the classics (wines from NZ, France and Australia represent around 80% of our sales) but also for established (and emerging) styles from all over the world. When we look at the other 20% which we broadly describe as ‘world wines’, these have grown by a massive 65% year-on-year with a significant amount of this growth coming from Italian wine sales which grew by 143% and are biting at the heels of sales of wines from Australia.
2) Kiwi whites are (finally) making their mark.
Our domestic sales saw significant growth in the three key white categories: Riesling (up by almost 240%), Chardonnay (up by 143%) and dessert wine (up by 66%). It is great to see these styles taken more seriously by the secondary market as these styles can be extremely rewarding if cellared properly. This month, two vintages of Bell Hill (2016 and 2020) Chardonnay set our record for the highest price paid for a new world white wine at The Wine Auction Room, selling for $387.75 a bottle.
3) It’s not just wine at The Wine Auction Room.
Likewise our sales of all non-wine products (this includes spirits, liqueurs, curios and glassware) grew by 113% with a 86% growth in spirit sales (including whisky and cognac / armagnac). There is huge demand for rare and interesting spirits, especially among younger consumers.
Highlights and Hidden Gems
Our top sellers in 2025 were ‘usual suspects’ of sorts, extremely well regarded collectable wines with limited supply (either due to production or age), all selling around our high estimates:
1) 2019 Domaine de la Romanee Conti Richebourg Grand Cru ($5875)
2) 1985 Petrus ($4112.5)
3) 1955 Penfolds Grange ($3760)
This said, the wines that we consistently saw the most interest in were those that offer amazing value to the buyers (and we don’t mean they were cheap)… Time and time again we saw well-cellared wines that offer exceptional value at retail delivering very strong returns at auction. Examples of this include 2013 bottlings from the likes of Alpha Domus and Brookfields in Hawkes Bay (consistently good, but not at the level of producers like Te Mata or Craggy Range) selling for twice current retail in June and August respectively. The same is true of good vintages (2006 and 2019) of Te Mata’s second wine Awatea with the ‘19 vintage selling for $117 in June.
With the growth of less traditional wine segments came strong demand for a wider selection of wines. Blue chip bottles from Italy, Spain and the USA sold well (think classic wines like Massetto, Gaja Barbresco, Vega-Sicilia Único and Dominus) but there was also significant interest in more esoteric wines with cult-like followings… We had South African dessert wine, high-end Argentine Malbec, old-vine red from Sicily and even Rioja Blanco (albeit from a legendary producer) selling over the $250 a bottle mark with fierce bidding for all of these wines. As mentioned in the infographic also saw huge demand for well-aged vintage port, a wine style that is gaining in popularity with millennials and Gen-Z.
Community
Our love of wine is at the heart of what we do and one of the things we love most about wine is its ability to connect people… it connects the drinker to the grapegrower and winemaker, old wines connect us with history, and it can help connect the hearts and minds of those with us when we share a special bottle (sometimes it also helps us connect other things, but lets not go there today).
This year, we are most proud that we were able to help give back to our community in a number of powerful ways:
-In February, one very notable kiwi winemaker (who has chosen to remain nameless) decided to clear some space in his cellar with our help and donated the full amount of the sale (almost $4000) to the Hato Hone St John Ambulance Service.
– In September we were able to partner with the Hawkes Bay Wine Auction to offer live online bidding in the biggest and oldest charity wine auction in the southern hemisphere for the first time ever. The auction raised a record $370,000 for Cranford Hospice and our online bidders walked away with two very special lots, a barrique (288 bottles) of Gimblet Gravels Winegrowers Association Cabernet and a ¼ barrique (72 bottles) of 2024 Te Mata Cabernet Sauvignon bottled exclusively for the event. One online bidder also narrowly missed out on the lot which fetched the highest price on the day, a ½ barrique (144 bottles) of 2015 Trinity Hill Touriga Francesca ‘Port’ which sold for $35,000. We will be helping the Hawkes Bay Wine Auction once again in 2026 and hope to set an even higher record and will be hosting an event in Auckland where you will be able to taste some of the special wines made for the event… keep reading for more info.
– Over the past few months we were able to help a very dedicated Felton Road collector sell through their collection, donating the full proceeds (around $20,000) to the Be Heard Foundation which offers mental health support for school age children in Otago.
We hugely appreciate your support in these endeavours, thank you.
Looking to 2026
We have an extremely exciting 2026 ahead with even more auctions and even more wine! As always, we’ll be dedicated to getting the absolute best returns for our consignors. Our first auction of 2026 starts on Boxing Day (2025) and runs through until the holiday period (for most of us at least) ends on Monday 12 January. There are some incredibly exciting auctions coming up, including a truly wonderful Single Vendor Burgundy Auction in the next month or so. Our first live auction of the year is on Tuesday 3 February, we’d love for you to join us in person if you are able (otherwise, you’ll be seeing us on the live stream).
Save the date: Tuesday 28 July!
On the last Tuesday in July (about 5 weeks out from the auction) we’ll be hosting a casual tasting of some of the lots in the Hawkes Bay Wine Auction here in Auckland… we’ll have some of the winemakers on-hand to answer and questions and we’ll also have more information about starting your own (or joining one of our) buying syndicates. We can’t wait to see you there!
Keep your wine cool this summer…
As we’ve mentioned before, we’re expecting a warm one this year. We have had several long term Wine Storage Room clients graduate to building their own cellars at home so we unusually have some space available, both long and short term. If you are storing wine for investment purposes, we always recommend that you store them in temperature controlled storage as wines stored this way always demand higher prices at auction.
The Wine Storage Room is a state-of-the-art, purpose built, secure cellar facility with 100% redundancy PLUS it is close to down-town Auckland and we offer 24-7 access with a simple monthly bill and no hidden fees. If you’ve been thinking about moving to professional storage, please have a chat with us, we’ll make the move easy!
A final word from Reece, “Thank you for trusting us with your wines, your bidding paddles, and your stories. Wine only truly comes alive when it’s shared, and everything we do is driven by the belief that great bottles deserve good company. We’re excited about what’s ahead in 2026, and we look forward to raising a glass with you again very soon.”
Ngā mihi nui,
The Wine Auction Room Team
