Does any wine deserve to sell for thousands of pounds?

Christie’s auction house recently sold seven rare bottles for a staggering £35,000, writes wine expert Rosamund Hall. But is eye-wateringly expensive tipple ever really worth it?

Seven bottles of Richebourg 1993 from Domaine de la Romanee-Conti were sold from Le Gavroche’s wine cellar (Getty/iStock)

But what would you do if you had a spare £35,000? Clear your credit card debts? Pay off your mortgage? Invest in a pension? Or you could, as was the case with one individual last month, buy seven bottles of wine.

This staggering purchase was made as part of the sale at Christie’s auction house of bottles from Le Gavroche’s wine cellar – a treasure trove of “who’s who” wines from the recently closed London restaurant owned by Michel Roux Jr. Overall, the sale raised a staggering £1.9m.

The wine that sold for the eye-watering price of £35k was Richebourg 1993 from Domaine de la Romanée-Conti, a pinot noir from Burgundy, France. DRC, as it’s familiarly known, is a producer that regularly tops the list of the most expensive wines in the world.