De Burgh dumps the red for white instead

RARE WINES from Chris de Burgh’s cellar are expected to net some £200,000 (€235,000) at an auction next month.

The singer says he is selling part of his collection because the market is right and someone else should enjoy them. “Every wine I’m selling I’ve actually tasted, one way or the other, so I know what I’m missing, but I think the time has come for someone else to enjoy them in my stead,” he said in a statement yesterday.

The sale of Rarities from The Private Cellar of Chris de Burgh at Christie’s auction house in London contains 320 bottles and 84 magnums of mainly red wine.

De Burgh, his wife Diane and his daughter, former Miss World Rosanna Davison, preferred to drink white wine, he said.

“Looking at the economics of the wine trade and how the business of selling wine fluctuates, I decided now was the right time,” he said.

Among the wines is a Château d’Yquem which first began the singer’s love of wine, a Christie’s statement said.

Working at his parents’ hotel Bargy Castle in Co Wexford as a teenager, a guest asked him to try the wine and “the special moment has stayed with him to this day”, the statement said.

De Burgh’s favourite wine from the collection is a case of 1945 Château Lafite Rothschild, which is valued at more than £1,000 a bottle. He finds “charmingly romantic” the history of this case, which has the original straw protecting the bottles since the end of the second World War.

“Considering the dramatic events that were unfolding across Europe and particularly in France at that time, it’s extraordinary that one of the finest wines of the century was made,” the singer said.

Other highlights include a case of 1961 Château Latour which is expected to sell for £30,000.

There are “wines in my cellar that have become so stellar, I would be very reluctant indeed to open them,” de Burgh told the magazine Decanter last year.

A collection of 62 magnums of Château Mouton Rothschild from between 1945 and 2005 is valued at between £70,000 and £90,000.

He first bought it as a 40 magnum collection up to 1985. It was “a real pleasure” adding to it but “tricky at times” to find each year, he said.

The wines were stored in a specially constructed, temperature-controlled wine room and cabinets at his home. “I’ll be having an intense review of my cellar to fill the spaces made by this sale – I can now focus on the remainder of my collection,” he said. The auction will take place at Christie’s, King Street, London, on March 24th.