Rare wine beloved of Napoleon sold for £21k
A bottle of wine which could have made Napoleon’s prison stay a little more tolerable has been sold for £21,000 at auction.
A bidding war at the Cape Fine & Rare Wine Auction in South Africa saw the Grand Constance 182 sell for 420,000 rand on may 22.
Christie’s Charlie Foley who conducted the sale described the bottle as “a true unicorn wine”.
Organisers said a UK-based Christie’s client bought the bottle, perhaps one of only 12 in the world.
It was once part of a case of the rare, sought-after sweet wine, much admired by Napoleon and perhaps destined to keep him company on his island prison of St Helena in the middle of the South Atlantic ocean.
But Napoleon died on 5 May 1821, as that year’s harvest was still ripening.
Niel Groenewald, MD of Nederburg wine estate and head of CFRWA, said of the the Grand Constance 1821: “A treasure of this calibre presents itself perhaps once in a lifetime, and anyone lucky enough to secure this wine at auction will be rewarded with an unbelievable valuable piece of wine history.”
Total auction sales at this year’s CFRWA reached £112,000.
The auction, live-streamed from the Rupert Museum in Stellenbosch and held in association with Christie’s, features some of South Africa’s finest and rarest wines.
