On 25 May 2014 in Hong Kong Jean-Claude Biver, alongside the firm Christie’s, put up for bids 200 bottles of exceptional wines from his private collection, as well as a unique box containing a bottle of Château d’Yquem 1811 presented with a Hublot watch whose dial is made with osmium crystal, the rarest metal on our planet, and a world technological first. This set comes in a presentation box made to order especially by the malletier Louis Vuitton for Mr. Biver, Chairman of Hublot and President of the LVMH Group Watch Division.
Among the 200 exceptional bottles up for bids that day, we can also highlight the extremely rare Château d’Yquem 1865, Château Haut Brion 1945, Cheval Blanc 1947, and certain great vintages of Châteaux Lafite Rothschild, Mouton Rothschild, Margaux and Haut Brion.
Jean-Claude Biver commented: “Yquem in particular, as well as the fine Bordeaux vintages, are first and foremost memory keepers or time keepers. Not only do they retain the memory of the magic fusion of God and mortal men, but they also form a genuine memory of human life and history.
For example, if we taste an 1811 Yquem, we are not just drinking one of the best wines in history, but also the memory of the political, geographic, economic and cultural history of our civilisation. For this reason, it is practically obligatory to drink these wines with a history and geography book to hand. Was 1811 not the year of the Comet? How did it affect the Earth’s climate? Where was Napoleon in 1811, and what was happening with his empire?
Being able to ask ourselves these questions and to transpose real people into this memory without any doubt represents the greatest privilege of discovering and tasting a bottle of this sort. That is why I sometimes say that Yquem is the historical memory of God and mortal men: which makes it a divine wine indeed.”
