Some bubbles are worth more than others: particularly when they’ve crossed paths with royalty. Take a magnum of Dom Pérignon Vintage 1961, served at the wedding of Princess Diana and Prince Charles decades before he would become King.
On December 11, one of these very rare bottles will be auctioned off by Bruun Rasmussen at Kongens Lyngby, a Danish auction house on the outskirts of Copenhagen. The vintage is from 1961, the year of the bride’s birth. It was disgorged twenty years later and labeled with a historical note: “Shipped specially in honor of the wedding of His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales and Lady Diana Spencer, July 29, 1981.”
As Thomas Rosendahl Andersen, Bruun Rasmussen’s wine manager, told AFP: “There are only twelve magnums available, and this is one of them.” The rarity and historic nature of this bottle, created especially for the blockbuster royal wedding, promises to generate huge bids: the magnum is estimated at between 67,000 and 80,000 euros, or $78,000 and $95,000.
Whoever buys it will be able to sip it with ease, according to the expert. “It’s perfectly drinkable,” says Andersen. “All the bottles of wine we sell at auction are examined and analyzed. For this type of bottle, we carry out several tests, including illuminating the bottle to check that the contents, i.e. the wine itself, has a very nice, clear color, and that it’s not brown and cloudy.” Andersen therefore believes that this unusual bottle could attract a wide variety of bidders: “It could be a classic wine collector, who finds it amusing to have this bottle in his collection, but also a collector of royal objects, who collects items perhaps related to Lady Diana or English royal memorabilia.”
For good reason: almost thirty years after her tragic death, Princess Diana’s personal effects are still driving bids up to staggering sums. The same is true of mementos from her ill-fated marriage to Charles—including the most bizarre, such as a slice of cake that sold for 2,600 euros in July 2021. The owner of the bottle, set for auction on December 11, is an anonymous collector who bought the magnum from a London dealer, the AFP reports.
This is not the first time that a magnum produced for this very special occasion has been auctioned: in 2004, a sale was cancelled for lack of a buyer. Clearly, no one wanted to pay $2030 for the bottle. Moët & Chandon had recommended drinking it “within two or three years” of the wedding, CBS reported at the time. Bidding in Swindon, west of London, stagnated at the equivalent of $2,128 before the sale was called off. Four years later, Heritage Auction had sold a magnum of this vintage for $12,000, or around 10,300 euros. Here is hoping the next sale of these rare bubbles won’t fall flat.
Originally published in Vanity Fair France
