We continue our tour de France with the prestigious region that is Burgundy and its small output of mythic wines from world-renowned appellations. Prepare yourselves: these rankings show a vast majority of winning bids at over €1,000.

To facilitate comparisons, we have chosen the most expensive cuvée from each domain and converted its final price to the format of a 75cl bottle. There is, however, one exception: the wines from domains Leroy and d’Auvenay have the same owner.

It’s undeniable: Burgundy continues to increase in value as the years go by. Over the course of the first semester of 2019, 11,421 lots of the 40,612 sold were from his region, sold for a total value of €3.5M (inc. VAT). This region represents 33% of the total turnover (compared to 31% in 2018) and 26% of volumes (compared to 23% in 2018).

Top 5 Burgundy bottles

This year, two bottles have crossed the €10,000 threshold: a Romanée-Conti 2000 and the Musigny 2005 from domain Georges Roumier. Interestingly, no other bottles other than those from the illustrious Domaine de la Romanée-Conti had previously crossed this threshold. In third position sits the 1998 Musigny from iconic domain Leroy.

The only bottles to sell at under €1,000 are the final two in our list. They are Domaine de Vogüé’s Musigny Grand Cru 2016 (€608, +11%) and the Chablis Grand Cru les Clos 2011 from Raveneau (€584, +45%). The prices of these wines are constantly increasing.

Burgundy, kingdom of rarity

Unlike other regions, there’s no need to wait for years on end to see the price of wines increase. On the contrary! The region produces a very limited output, which is why most of the wines in the ranking are recent vintages, such as Emmanuel Rouget’s Vosne-Romanée Premier Cru Cros Parantoux 2016. There are, nevertheless, some mature vintages (Corton-Charlemagne 2005 from Domaine Coche-Dury, €4,621) and old bottles such as a 1955 Romanée-Saint-Vivant from Charles Noëllat (€1,155, +52%) and a Romanée 1971 from Château de Vosne-Romanée, which at the time was owned by the Liger-Belair family, now the Bouchard family. White wines are another rarity in this list, representing only seven of the wines. They almost all come from the Côte de Beaune whereas the red wines hail from the Côte de Nuits.

Some very specialist wines attracted seasoned wine lovers, including Jacky Truchot’s 1998 Clos de la Roche (€1,763), a winemaker with 7 hectares of vines who finished his career with the magnificent 2005 vintage, and Henri Jayer’s Vosne-Romanée Premier Cru Cros Parantoux 1988 (the domain stopped production in 1996). A touch lower in the rankings is the same wine in the 2016 vintage, this time from Emmanuel Rouget, who had inherited part of the domain.

Organics and biodynamics are booming in Burgundy too. These forms of viticulture are incarnated by the region’s greats: DRC, Leroy, d’Auvenay, Comtes Lafon, Jean-Marc-Roulot, Dugat-Py and Joseph Drouhin. Others are adopting an organic approach, including domains Georges Roumier, Armand Rousseau, Ponsot, Engel, Jacques-Frédéric Mugnier and Méo-Camuzet. This list also features a couple of natural producers: Domaine Bizot (Echezeaux Grand Cru 2002: €1,043, +14%) and domain Prieuré Roch, now a collectable domain, since the producer’s passing late last year.

Once again, beautiful Burgundy caused many a bidding war in our auctions, pushing up price estimates. Despite being known for their chauvinism, the French are not the primary buyers of Burgundy; our colleagues in Hong Kong confirm that Asian wine enthusiasts, “without ever having set foot in France, they have incredibly precise knowledge of the climats of Burgundy”. Last but not least, possible the most impressive auction result of the year so far was the sale of an assorted case of 2009 DRC, sold for €47,181 (+21%).

See our Burgundy wines currently for sale

Most expensive Burgundy bottles of 2019 so far