Christie's wine department is ecstatic, as they have achieved their strongest result in their London salesroom since 1997.

Selling 89% by lot and 94% by value, the auction achieved £2.94m ($4.6m) with 852 lots sold out of 966 offered in a sale led by Romanée-Conti: a case of the 1990 vintage brought £115,000 whilst one of the 1988 achieved £63,250.

The Bordeaux was selling well too. A case of Pétrus 1982 made £39,100 whilst four cases of Chateau Lafite 1982 all sold for around £30,000 (at the high end or higher than their estimates). Some of the Lafite hailed from the Sir Evelyn de Rothschild collection.

Other DRC and Lafite lots rounded out the top 10. What was most remarkable of all, however, was that every single lot in the top 10 sold to an Asian private collector.

There were also some fine whiskies sold in the auction with a bottle of 50 year old Balvenie selling for £13,800.

Chris Munro, Director, London Wine Department commented: "We are very pleased with the grand total of £2,939,382 for our two day sale in London - the highest total achieved for the category at Christie's London since 1997, and a fitting end to a tremendous year for the department.

"International bidders competed for the very best wines from Bordeaux to Burgundy with DRC taking the top spot as a 12 bottle case of Romanee-Conti 1990 fetched an impressive £115,000.

"Further highlights included £63,250 paid for a dozen bottles of Romanée-Conti 1988, and we were also particularly pleased with the results for the exceptional collection of whisky and cognac which saw a single bottle of Balvenie 50 YO sell for £13,800."

David Elswood, International Director of Wine added: "We were proud to offer a superb range of Château Lafite-Rothschild from the collection of Sir Evelyn de Rothschild, which was 100% sold. The collection realised a total of over £850,000, with buyers originating from around the globe."