A French cellar with 465 Coche-Dury bottles heads to auction on Nov. 24

A private French wine cellar centered on bottles from Coche-Dury will be sold in an online auction on November 24, in a sale that is expected to draw strong interest from collectors of top Burgundy.

The auction house Maurice Auction is offering nearly 900 bottles from the cellar, which was built over several decades by one collector. The sale includes close to 200 lots. The main attraction is a group of 465 bottles from Coche-Dury, the Meursault estate that has become one of the most sought-after names in white Burgundy.

Large single-owner offerings from Coche-Dury are uncommon, especially when the wines come from one source and have remained in the same cellar since purchase. The collection reflects a period when some private buyers were still able to secure regular allocations directly from leading growers through long relationships.

The Coche-Dury selection includes nearly 100 lots. Among them is a vertical of Corton-Charlemagne Grand Cru spanning the 2005 through 2016 vintages. The sale also includes runs of Meursault-Perrières Premier Cru from 2006 through 2016 and Meursault-Genevrières Premier Cru from 2009 through 2017.

One of the largest groups in the auction is a vertical of more than 250 bottles of Meursault Village, covering more than two decades of production from 1995 through 2017. Depth like that is rarely seen on the market, particularly when the provenance is so consistent across the vintages.

Agathe de Saint Céran, the expert working with the sale, said the number of bottles from such a scarce estate, combined with the reported condition of the fill levels and labels, made the offering unusual. For buyers in the high-end wine market, bottle condition and storage history often weigh as heavily as the producer and vintage.

Maurice Auction says almost all of the bottles were bought directly from producers through allocation, and that invoices document much of the provenance. The wines were also kept under stable temperature and humidity conditions after purchase and were not traded from cellar to cellar, a point that can add confidence for collectors concerned about authenticity and handling.

The auction reaches beyond Coche-Dury. The cellar also includes bottles from Domaine des Comtes Lafon, Arnaud Ente, Vincent Dauvissat, Guffens-Heynen and Les Héritiers du Comte Lafon. Champagne is represented by Ulysse Collin, while the Loire section includes more than 70 bottles from Clos Rougeard. Several lots from Jean-Louis Chave are also part of the sale.

The offering comes at a time when provenanced bottles from top Burgundy estates remain highly prized, even as buyers have become more selective about condition, storage and source. In that market, an intact private cellar with direct-purchase history can command attention well beyond the headline names on the labels.

For Burgundy collectors, the November 24 sale stands out because it combines scale, consistency and traceability in one offering. Those features, together with the concentration of Coche-Dury bottles across multiple appellations and vintages, are likely to make the auction one of the more closely watched wine sales of the season.