From famous chateaux ranging from Lafite to Margaux and Mouton, wine lovers had a chance to bid for top French wine in Beijing on Friday at the first wine auction yet on the Chinese mainland.

Around 1,000 bottles of fine wine from France’s renowned Bordeaux area were on auction with a starting price of several hundred to several thousand U.S. dollars Xinhua reports.

94 percent of the wines were sold and over 90 percent of the buyers said they would drink the wines themselves, not for investment.

The future of the Château Latour vineyard was in question after it emerged that the investment bank Lazard is discreetly offering the label for sale to French competitors.

Owned by the president of the luxury-goods group PPR, François Pinault, Château Latour is regarded as one of the finest wines from the Medoc region.

The Château Latour estate consists of 78 hectares of Bordeaux vineyards but only grapes from the 47 hectares that surround the chateau at the heart of the estate are used to make the Grand Vin de Château Latour.

After an absence of seven years, Christie’s wine department will be back in Asia for an auction on 29 Nov 2008 at the Hong Kong Exhibition and Convention Centre and it will open Christie’s Hong Kong Fall 2008 Sale Season.

Christie’s International Wine Department will conduct a focused sale of fine wine including select offerings from the cellars of first growth, Château Latour.

Christie’s Hong Kong sales totaled HK $2.4 billion in Spring 2008, the highest total ever achieved for any auction season in Asia.

The evening sale will feature around 250 selected lots, with 150 lots from Ch̢teau Latour. One of the top prizes is a 1900 magnum estimated at $18,000 Р$24,000. The Latour selection in its entirety is expected to realize in excess of HK $10 million.

Alongside the unique offering from Château Latour will be a further range of fine and rare wines, all sourced from impeccable European cellars, including rare Pétrus and other First Growth Bordeaux, a selection of exceptional Domaine de la Romanée-Conti, vintage Champagne and venerable Vintage Port and Old Cognacs.

One Beijing-based billionaire has splashed out a record $500,000 on 27 bottles of red wine, London-based Antique Wine Company said on Saturday.

The anonymous Chinese entrepreneur bought a mix of vintages of Romanee Conti, a Burgundy wine and considered to be among the world’s most exclusive with only 450 cases produced each year.[...]

“It is the highest price that has ever been achieved for a single lot,” Managing Director Stephen Williams of the London- based Antique Wine Company told Reuters on Saturday.

“I don’t think he has bought this as an investment — he has bought it to drink,” he added. “The fine wine industry is completely immune from the global credit crunch.”