A treasure trove of hundreds of bottles of the most expensive wine in the world, Romanée Conti, will go under the auctioneer`s hammer in Geneva this Sunday.

Usually, the mythical red burgundy is sold in twos and threes or – at most – cases of 12. On Sunday, a private collection of more than 1,400 bottles of burgundies from the Romanée Conti Domain – including hundreds of bottles from the minuscule Romanée Conti vineyard itself – will be sold by a new Geneva auction house called Baghera Wines.

The entire collection is estimated to be worth at least £2.7m. The most valuable single lot is expected to be a case of 12 bottles of 1988 vintage Romanée-Conti, which is estimated to be worth around £140,000.

That works out at £11,666 a bottle or £2,333 for a small glass.

It is debatable, however, whether any of the wine on sale this Sunday, including hundreds of bottles from other Grand Cru Burgundy vineyards, will ever be drunk. Investment, or speculation, in trophy wines, notably by Asian buyers, means that the world`s most prized names like Romanée-Conti are more often kept in vaults or secure warehouses than in wine cellars.

The collection on sale this Sunday is said to have been assembled over 15 years by a Swiss investor. It has been stocked until now at the Geneva Freeport, a warehouse complex exempt from customs duties and taxes often used to store valuable works of art.

Executive director Michael Ganne, who founded Baghera Wines last year with two former Christie`s colleagues, Julie Carpentier and Emmanuel Mercé, said the sale was ` the most significant auction of exceptional wines of the last two decades in continental Europe`.

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