(From left) Loïc Pasquet, Winemaker & Founder of Liber Pater and Amayès Aouli, Global Head of Wine & Spirits at Bonhams.
For 20 years, Loïc Pasquet’s Liber Pater has pursued an unlikely ambition: recreating the taste of Bordeaux before phylloxera. Now, its first ex-domaine auction offers collectors a rare chance to own a piece of that experiment.
There are expensive wines, and then there is Liber Pater. Produced in quantities of roughly 500 bottles and only in the best years, the Graves estate has become one of the world’s most elusive – and costly – wines. Now, as Liber Pater marks its 20th anniversary, its first ex-domaine auction is set to put some of its rarest bottles directly into collectors’ hands.
On 21 November 2026, Bonhams Hong Kong will present Liber Pater Jubilee: 20 Years of Wine History in Motion, a 20-lot sale drawn directly from the estate’s cellar. But the significance of the auction lies in the philosophy behind the bottles.
A wine from another Bordeaux
Liber Pater 2011 (1x 18L), estimated at HK$3,000,000 – 5,000,000.
Liber Pater was founded in 2005 by winemaker Loïc Pasquet in Bordeaux’s Graves region with an unusually ambitious objective: to revive the character of Bordeaux before the phylloxera epidemic transformed European viticulture in the late 19th century.
That means going well beyond traditional winemaking. Pasquet cultivates ungrafted, or franc de pied, vines on their own roots and has brought back obscure indigenous varieties including Castets, Mancin, Pardotte, Tarnay and Saint-Macaire – grapes that largely disappeared following the phylloxera crisis.
In 2015, Liber Pater released its first vintage made entirely from ungrafted vines, marking a significant step in Pasquet’s attempt to recreate an older expression of Bordeaux.
The art of doing things differently
Loïc Pasquet and Liber Pater 2019 (1x 27L), estimated at HK$6,000,000 – 9,000,000.
Liber Pater’s 2.5-hectare vineyard sits in the Landiras-Villagrain anticline, a distinctive microclimate that makes it one of the higher-altitude vineyards on Bordeaux’s Left Bank.
Production is deliberately demanding. Vines are planted at high density and farmed at exceptionally low yields, with horses and mules used for ploughing and grapes harvested by hand over a tightly condensed three-day period.
In the cellar, the intervention remains minimal, with wild yeasts, no added sulphur and, in recent vintages, clay amphorae replacing oak. The objective is not simply to make a rare wine, but to preserve a particular idea of terroir.
Rarity by design
The resulting scarcity is remarkable. Liber Pater produces around 500 bottles in a vintage, and just ten vintages have been released since 2006.
That makes the Bonhams sale particularly significant. Alongside bottles from the estate archive, the auction includes large formats and multi-vintage collections that chart Liber Pater’s development over two decades.
The headline lot is almost absurd in scale: a one-of-one 27-litre Liber Pater 2019, estimated at HK$6 million–9 million. Signed by H.S.H. Prince Albert II of Monaco, the bottle was made from nine indigenous Bordeaux varieties grown entirely on franc de pied vines.
The winning collector will also receive a private Liber Pater experience, including an estate visit, access to the Conclave during annual blending discussions, a private dinner and an invitation to the Francs de Pied Gala Dinner.
More than a bottle
One of the “Seven Virtues / Seven Sins” Collection Cases.
The auction also includes a 2011 Liber Pater in an 18-litre format, estimated at HK$3 million–5 million, alongside seven “Seven Virtues / Seven Sins” lots, each bringing together nine to 13 bottles spanning Liber Pater and related projects.
Those collections extend the story beyond Bordeaux, including Denarius and Tetradrachm, the latter connected to Pasquet’s work preserving ungrafted vines in Naxos, Greece.
In that sense, the Bonhams sale is about more than provenance or rarity. It represents the culmination of a 20-year attempt to preserve a version of wine history that might otherwise have disappeared.
