Bonhams Will Auction Liber Pater Bottles Directly From the Estate’s Cellar in Hong Kong

Bonhams will hold the first direct-from-cellar auction for Liber Pater on November 21 in Hong Kong, offering collectors a rare chance to buy bottles released straight from the Bordeaux estate’s private cellar.

The sale, called “Liber Pater Jubilee: 20 Years of Wine History in Motion,” will be staged at Bonhams Hong Kong in Wan Chai as part of the auction house’s autumn wine season. Bonhams said the live auction will include 20 curated lots to mark two decades since Liber Pater’s first vintage in 2006.

The headline lot is a unique 27-liter bottle of Liber Pater 2019, estimated at HK$6 million to HK$9 million. Bonhams said only one such bottle was produced. It is signed by Prince Albert II of Monaco and will be sold with a private visit to the estate, access to annual blend discussions with the Liber Pater team, a private dinner, and an invitation to the Francs de Pied gala dinner.

The sale is unusual because Liber Pater has never before opened its cellar for a public ex-domaine auction. In wine trade terms, that means every lot comes directly from the producer rather than from a collector, merchant, or broker. For buyers at the top end of the market, direct provenance can carry major value because it reduces doubts about storage conditions and chain of ownership.

Liber Pater was founded in 2005 by winemaker Loïc Pasquet in the Graves area of Bordeaux. The estate has built its identity around a difficult and costly goal: trying to recreate the taste and structure of Bordeaux wines from before the phylloxera crisis of the late 19th century. That epidemic destroyed vineyards across Europe and changed how most wine regions were replanted. Today, nearly all Bordeaux vines are European grape varieties grafted onto American rootstocks that are resistant to the pest.

According to Bonhams, Liber Pater took a different path. The estate grows ungrafted vines, known in French as franc de pied, and works with old native Bordeaux varieties that largely disappeared after phylloxera. Bonhams said those varieties include Castets, Mancin, Pardotte, Tarnay, and Saint-Macaire. The auction house said every Liber Pater vintage since 2015 has been made from 100% ungrafted vines.

That production method is part of a broader attempt to revive older viticultural practices. Bonhams said the 2.5-hectare vineyard is farmed with very low yields, high-density planting, horse and mule plowing, and hand harvesting over a short three-day window. In the cellar, the estate uses wild yeasts, avoids added sulfur, and in recent vintages has aged wine in clay amphorae instead of oak barrels.

Those choices sharply limit production. Bonhams said Liber Pater makes about 500 bottles in a typical vintage and only releases wine in years the estate considers exceptional. Over 20 years, that has resulted in just 10 vintages.

That scarcity has helped turn Liber Pater into one of the best-known names in the ultra-luxury wine market, even though it remains a very small estate. Bottles are rarely seen at auction in quantity, and the Bonhams sale is designed as a retrospective of the estate’s development. Along with the 27-liter 2019 bottle, the auction will include an 18-liter bottle of Liber Pater 2011 estimated at HK$3 million to HK$5 million.

Another major part of the sale is a group of seven lots from what Bonhams calls the “Seven Virtues / Seven Sins” collection. Each lot contains between 9 and 13 standard bottles and combines red and white releases from Liber Pater from 2006 through 2019 with bottles from Pasquet’s related labels Denarius and Tetradrachm. Bonhams placed estimates of HK$1 million to HK$1.5 million on each of those lots.

Denarius comes from a sister project in Graves, while Tetradrachm is tied to Pasquet’s preservation work in Naxos, Greece. Bonhams linked both labels to a wider effort to protect ungrafted vines and preserve older grape material. The house said that work also connects to Francs de Pied, an association founded by Pasquet and now operating under the patronage of Prince Albert II of Monaco.

In comments released by Bonhams, Pasquet described the auction as a milestone for the estate. He said the opening of the private cellar was intended to celebrate 20 years of work focused on restoring Bordeaux’s pre-phylloxera heritage, saving old grape varieties, and reviving what he sees as a terroir-driven style of wine from an earlier era.

Amayès Aouli, Bonhams’ global head of wine and spirits, said the auction house viewed the sale as an important moment for the fine wine market because of the estate’s limited output and because bottles from Liber Pater seldom appear with this level of provenance and condition. He described the 27-liter 2019 as the centerpiece of the event.

The sale also reflects the way top auction houses are increasingly blending fine wine with experience-based luxury offerings. In this case, the top lot includes not only the bottle itself but also access to the estate and its internal blending process, turning the purchase into a mix of collectible asset and private hospitality package.

Hong Kong remains a major center for that market. Bonhams has long used the city as a hub for high-value wine sales aimed at collectors across Asia and beyond. Staging the Liber Pater auction there places the release in one of the world’s most active auction markets for rare bottles.

Bonhams said the auction will take place at its Hong Kong saleroom at 10/F, Six Pacific Place, Queen’s Road East, Wan Chai. The company, founded in 1793, operates across more than 60 specialist categories and has made direct-from-estate sales an important part of its strategy in wine and spirits. With Liber Pater, the house is betting that rarity, strict provenance, and a strong historical narrative will draw bidders willing to compete at the very top of the category.