Some wines are so rare and so legendary that they are just in a different class - even to those most collectors would be excited to have in their cellar.

Christie's held an exceptional sale of fine wines over the weekend. But there was one really stand-out lot: four bottles of Côte de Nuits, Domaine de la Romanée-Conti, vintage 1990.

Critic Allen Meadows's influential Burghound website in reviewing the wine refers to "...a breathtaking panoply of Asian spices, exotic fruit aromas and a touch of earth followed by rich, lush, almost opulent flavors that melt in the mouth and coat the palate with a layer of velvet on the fantastically long finish."

The review goes on to predict that the wine will maintain at least this standard of quality for several decades. The bottles on sale here have been kept in excellent condition with the level of the wine 2.5cm or better.

Estimated at $40,000-60,000 from the start, bidders saw the bottles as an opportunity too good to miss and chased the valuable bottles all the way to $78,000 - an extraordinary price per bottle.

It is likely that the wine was bought at least in part as an investment, giving its proven reliability in recent years.