A glass of wine usually costs less than lunch. Then there is Domaine de la Romanée-Conti's 1945 Romanée-Conti, a single bottle of which sold for $812,500 at auction in March 2026. Pour that bottle into five standard glasses and each one carries a price tag around $162,500, more than most people spend on a car.
Every "most expensive wine" list on the internet stops at the price of the bottle. We wanted to go one step further and ask the question a wine lover actually asks at the table: what would this cost by the glass? There are really two answers to "the most expensive wine in the world," so we have split them into two lists below: the wines that trade for the highest prices on the open market today, and the single bottles that have sold for record sums at auction. Each entry shows the cost of one standard glass. If reading this leaves you wanting to build a cellar of your own, our guide on how to start a wine collection is a more grounded place to begin.
Most Expensive Wines at a Glance
- Most expensive wine by market price: Leroy Musigny Grand Cru, a Burgundy Pinot Noir averaging around $52,800 a bottle
- Priciest single bottle ever sold: $812,500 for a 1945 Domaine de la Romanée-Conti (Acker, March 2026)
- Cost of one glass of that record bottle: roughly $162,500, based on a standard five-glass pour
- Most expensive Champagne: the 1907 Heidsieck Monopole "Diamant Bleu," recovered from a Baltic Sea shipwreck, at $275,000 a bottle
- Most expensive white wine: Domaine d'Auvenay Bâtard-Montrachet Grand Cru, a Burgundy Chardonnay averaging around $22,200 a bottle
- The by-the-glass angle: wine by-the-glass systems like Coravin now let sommeliers and collectors pour a taste of a rare bottle without opening the whole thing
Contents
The Most Expensive Wines by Market Price
This is the list most people mean by "the most expensive wines in the world": the bottles that command the highest average prices on the open market, tracked across available vintages and merchants. The ranking below follows Wine-Searcher's 2025 survey of global merchant prices. Cost per glass assumes a standard 750ml bottle poured into five 150ml glasses, the typical restaurant measure. Fine wine prices move constantly, so treat these as a current snapshot rather than fixed figures.
| Rank | Wine | Avg. Bottle Price | Cost per Glass |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 |
Leroy, Musigny Grand Cru Pinot Noir, Burgundy, France |
~$52,820 | ~$10,560 |
| 2 |
Domaine de la Romanée-Conti, Romanée-Conti Grand Cru Pinot Noir, Burgundy, France |
~$23,560 | ~$4,710 |
| 3 |
Domaine d'Auvenay, Chevalier-Montrachet Grand Cru Chardonnay, Burgundy, France |
~$22,830 | ~$4,570 |
| 4 |
Domaine d'Auvenay, Bâtard-Montrachet Grand Cru Chardonnay, Burgundy, France (the world's most expensive white wine) |
~$22,200 | ~$4,440 |
| 5 |
Domaine d'Auvenay, Criots-Bâtard-Montrachet Grand Cru Chardonnay, Burgundy, France |
~$21,740 | ~$4,350 |
| 6 |
Domaine Leflaive, Montrachet Grand Cru Chardonnay, Burgundy, France |
~$19,100 | ~$3,820 |
| 7 |
Domaine Georges & Christophe Roumier, Musigny Grand Cru Pinot Noir, Burgundy, France |
~$18,510 | ~$3,700 |
| 8 |
Leroy, Chambertin Grand Cru Pinot Noir, Burgundy, France |
~$15,020 | ~$3,000 |
| 9 |
Egon Müller, Scharzhofberger Riesling Trockenbeerenauslese Riesling, Mosel, Germany (the only non-Burgundy on the list) |
~$13,680 | ~$2,740 |
| 10 |
Domaine d'Auvenay, Mazis-Chambertin Grand Cru Pinot Noir, Burgundy, France |
~$12,030 | ~$2,410 |
Two names, one winemaker: Six of these ten wines come from Lalou Bize-Leroy, through her two estates, Domaine Leroy and Domaine d'Auvenay. Both farm biodynamically in tiny quantities from Burgundy's most prestigious vineyards, which is a large part of why they sit at the very top of the market.
The Most Expensive Wines Ever Sold at Auction
This is a different list. These are one-off hammer prices for single, often historic bottles, driven by provenance, rarity, and the theater of the saleroom rather than by what the wine trades for day to day. A record price is not the same thing as a market average, which is exactly why we have kept the two apart. Cost per glass again assumes five glasses per standard bottle, with large formats adjusted.
| Wine | Sale Price | Cost per Glass |
|---|---|---|
|
Domaine de la Romanée-Conti, Romanée-Conti 1945 Burgundy, France (Acker, New York, March 2026) |
$812,500 | ~$162,500 |
|
Screaming Eagle Cabernet Sauvignon 1992, six-liter Imperial Napa Valley, USA (charity auction, 2000) |
$500,000 | ~$12,500 (a six-liter bottle holds about 40 standard pours) |
|
1907 Heidsieck Monopole "Diamant Bleu," Gout Americain Champagne, France (recovered from a 1916 shipwreck) |
$275,000 | ~$55,000 |
|
Château Lafite Rothschild 1869 Pauillac, Bordeaux, France (Sotheby's Hong Kong, 2010) |
~$234,000 | ~$46,800 |
|
Penfolds Block 42 Kalimna Cabernet Sauvignon 2004, Ampoule Barossa Valley, Australia |
$168,000 | Not designed for glass pours; the ampoule is a single, sealed tasting vessel |
|
Château Lafite Rothschild 1787, "Thomas Jefferson bottle" Pauillac, Bordeaux, France (Christie's, 1985) |
$156,000 | ~$31,200 |
A note on the numbers: The Château Lafite 1869 sale set the record for a standard 750ml bottle. The 1945 Romanée-Conti that sold for $812,500 in 2026 broke the same wine's earlier $558,000 record from 2018. Records like these tend to fall every few years, so the top of this list is a moving target.
Why Do Some Wines Cost More Than a House?
No single factor explains a six-figure bottle. It is usually a combination of the following:
Scarcity
Grand Cru vineyards in Burgundy can be tiny. Domaine de la Romanée-Conti's namesake plot covers less than four and a half acres and produces around six thousand bottles a year. Domaine Leroy's Musigny yields fewer than two hundred cases. When demand from collectors worldwide chases a few hundred bottles, prices move fast. Nearly every wine at the top of this list is Burgundian Pinot Noir, which is no coincidence.
Provenance and History
A bottle tied to a shipwreck, a famous cellar, or a historical figure carries a story that has nothing to do with what is in the glass. The 1787 "Jefferson bottle" and the shipwrecked 1907 Heidsieck both sell on narrative as much as on flavor. That Heidsieck, incidentally, is a Champagne that spent more than eighty years on the Baltic seabed before it was recovered.
Vintage and Critical Acclaim
A single hundred-point score from a major critic can multiply a wine's value overnight. Exceptional growing seasons, like 1945 in Burgundy, produce wines that go on to define a producer's reputation for decades.
Format and Condition
Large-format bottles such as magnums and Imperials age more slowly and are produced in far smaller numbers, which is part of why Screaming Eagle's six-liter 1992 fetched $500,000 at a single charity sale.
Could You Actually Taste One by the Glass?
Here is the part every other list on this subject leaves out. Traditionally, a bottle this rare only had two outcomes: it stayed sealed in a cellar as an investment, or it was opened once, for one occasion, and finished the same night. There was no middle ground, and no way to taste a wine like this without either buying an entire bottle or getting lucky at a collector's dinner.
That is changing. Wine by-the-glass systems now let sommeliers, collectors, and top restaurants extract a single pour from a bottle through the cork, without ever removing it, so the rest of the wine can be poured on a different night, to a different guest, at a different price point. It is the same idea used at fine-dining wine bars that sell coveted Burgundy and Bordeaux by the glass instead of by the bottle. The wine gets tasted. The bottle stays intact for its next pour.
This is not hypothetical. Across the Coravin Guide, our directory of the best wine-by-the-glass venues in the world, some of the most serious cellars pour rare and prestige bottles one glass at a time, precisely because a system like Coravin keeps the rest of the bottle intact. In San Francisco, wine bars keep ten or more Coravin selections so that rare bottles stay in perfect condition between pours. In Paris, Saint-Germain rooms anchor sixty-pour by-the-glass lists on Bordeaux and Burgundy classics. And in London, cellars like the one at Gordon Ramsay's Savoy Grill lean on Burgundy and Champagne with rare Port and dessert wines poured by the glass. You can browse them all through the Coravin Guide's wine destinations.
Drinking Rare Wine by the Glass With Coravin
Most of the wines on this list are older vintages sealed with a natural cork, which is exactly the scenario the Coravin Timeless wine by-the-glass system was built for. A precision-engineered needle goes through the cork, pure argon gas fills the space left behind as wine is poured, and the cork reseals itself when the needle is withdrawn. Wine always tastes like it's just been opened, glass after glass, without ever pulling the cork.
For the Champagne on these lists, like the shipwrecked 1907 Heidsieck, the Coravin Sparkling wine by-the-glass system does the same job for sparkling wine: a stopper replaces the cork or cage, and the bubbles hold for at least four weeks between pours.
Neither system will make an $812,500 bottle affordable. What it does is give any wine lover, and any restaurant with a serious cellar, a way to open a legendary bottle without betting the whole thing on a single night.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the most expensive wine in the world?
It depends on how you measure. By average market price, the most expensive wine in the world is Leroy's Musigny Grand Cru, a Burgundy Pinot Noir that averages around $52,800 a bottle. By auction record, the highest price ever paid for a single bottle is $812,500, for a 1945 Domaine de la Romanée-Conti sold in New York in March 2026.
What is the most expensive Champagne?
The 1907 Heidsieck Monopole "Diamant Bleu," recovered from a shipwreck off the coast of Finland in 1998, has sold for as much as $275,000 a bottle, making it the most expensive Champagne on record.
What is the most expensive white wine?
Domaine d'Auvenay's Bâtard-Montrachet Grand Cru, a Burgundy Chardonnay from Lalou Bize-Leroy, is the world's most expensive white wine by market price, averaging around $22,200 a bottle. Germany's Egon Müller Scharzhofberger Riesling Trockenbeerenauslese is the most expensive white outside Burgundy, at roughly $13,700.
Why is Burgundy so heavily represented on this list?
Burgundy's best vineyards are minuscule compared to Bordeaux, production is capped by tiny plot sizes, and top producers like Domaine de la Romanée-Conti and Domaine Leroy release only a few hundred cases a year. Limited supply and global collector demand keep prices near the top of every ranking. For more on regions, grapes, and how wine is made, our Wine 101 guides cover the fundamentals.