Sotheby’s Wine is delighted to present an exceptional Single Owner collection to kick off our summer auction series: The Cellar of Lewis Chester | The Inaugural Selection | No Reserve, opening for bidding on 18 May 2023. This remarkable No Reserve Auction represents a mere fraction of one of the country’s most extensive and comprehensive cellars, curated over many years by an extraordinarily determined collector and wine academic, the founder of the “Oscars of Fine Wine”: The Golden Vines® Awards, Lewis Chester DipWSET.

Having decided the time is right for fellow fine wine devotees to have the opportunity to acquire these superb wines, Mr Chester explained his motivation thus:

“As a collector, I began - like most fine wine lovers and collectors - buying Bordeaux En Primeur. Within a few years, I had developed a taste for Champagne and Burgundy - afterall, as I like to say, ‘all roads lead to Burgundy’. However, once I started studying wine, my interests in fine wine became fairly broad. I had been collecting the top wines from Bordeaux, Burgundy, Champagne, Tuscany and Piedmont for a number of years, but now my interests extended to California, Australia, the Rhône Valley, the Loire Valley, the Alsace and the Mosel Valley. I had also studied and experienced the aging benefits of large formats, particularly for sparkling wine. Therefore, over time, my growing collection began to have an outsized exposure to large formats. The vast bulk of the collection was purchased on release and is held in bond. Provenance has always been of utmost importance to me.

Today, my collection is far too big to contemplate consuming it all, although I have been giving it a good crack! Further, I own some incredible wines in large quantities, making perfect sense to let some of these available for other fine wine lovers to enjoy.”

Lewis Chester DipWSET

London, UK

The Cellar of Lewis Chester | The Inaugural Selection | No Reserve will open for online bidding on 18 May, culminating in an online-only auction on 1 June at 10am BST.

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Gary Owen

Director, Head of Auction Sales, Wine

+44 78 90 434537

GARY.OWEN@SOTHEBYS.COM

James Reed

Director, Specialist, Wine

+44 20 7293 5014

JAMES.REED@SOTHEBYS.COM

Celian Ravel d’Estienne

Director, Specialist, Wine

+44 (0) 207 293 5019

CELIAN.RAVEL@SOTHEBYS.COM

Finn Schauer

Deputy Director, Specialist, Wine

+44 20 7293 5045

FINN.SCHAUER@SOTHEBYS.COM