$8.44 MILLION FOR McCLENDON WINE COLLECTION

NOTHING DRIVES UP the price of a commodity at auction like a death. The wine collection of late Chesapeake Energy Corp. co-founder Aubrey McClendon sold for $8.44 million, above the estimated range and breaking records for some of the rare French bottles. Included are Bordeaux wines such as Chateau Mouton Rothschild and Chateau Margaux, as well as Cabernets from Napa Valley, according to Hart Davis Hart Wine Co., which ran the auction at a Chicago restaurant in September. When the sale was announced in August, the collection was estimate d to be worth $5.1 million to $7.6 million. Almost 1OOO bidders participated, with the highest price for a single lot going to a case of three double magnums of 1989 Chateau Petrus, which sold for $65,725, including the 19.5 percent buyer’s premium. Three lots of 1989 Haut Brion double magnums set records, with two selling for $35,85O. About two-thirds of the collection, measured by sales price, went to US buyers. The auction was held the day after the deadline to file what were expected to be hundreds of millions of dollars in claims against McClendon’s estate. McClendon was one of the first US energy explorers to employ sideways drilling and intensive hydraulic fracturing techniques to crack dense shale formations. The Oklahoma native built Chesapeake into the second-largest US gas producer before a shareholder revolt and cratering energy prices forced him out. He died on March 2, just hours after he was indicted on federal bid-rigging charges, when his vehicle slammed into a highway retaining wall in Oklahoma City. McClendon “bought the best vintages and he bought a lot of them,” Hart Davis Hart Wine President Ben Nelson said. “Such huge quantities of the finest wines like this aren’t something anyone will see at auction again.”