Aubrey McClendon’s wine collection expected to draw millions at auction

As the charismatic leader of Chesapeake Energy, the late Aubrey McClendon collected fine bottles of wine along with oil and gas leases. Le Pin. Mouton Rothschild. Cult Napa Cabernets. They were all in his cellar.

Before McClendon was forced out of Chesapeake in 2013, it was not unusual for the flamboyant businessman to pop a cork in celebration with business associates, friends and family.

But things have been tough in the oil patch and now the family thinks it’s time to auction off the remainder of his collection, more than 4,600 bottles of wine valued at up to $7.6 million.

The collection, which includes large format bottles (those massive things that are sometimes the equivalent of eight bottles of wine) of Le Pin, Pétrus and Mouton Rothschild.

“I think it’s pretty incredible, when you look at the wines he has. He really honed in on the best stuff and he bought large quantities of it,” said Ben Nelson, president of Hart Davis Hart Wine Co. in Chicago , the auction house which is conducting the sale. “These are the top lines from the ‘80s, ‘90s and early 2000s”

Bidding on the auction will open online on Thursday with the actual event to be held Sept. 17 at TRU restaurant in Chicago. The wine is divided into 1,058 lots, or groups.

McClendon died after slamming his SUV into a concrete embankment outside of Oklahoma City in March. He died one day after being indicted by the federal government on bid-rigging charges.

McClendon’s finances are in disarray. Duke University filed an almost $10 million claim against the estate and one lawyer representing a creditor says McClendon died owing so much money that the estate is insolvent, according to the Wall Street Journal. Attorneys representing McClendon said that isn’t so.

Sources with knowledge of wine auctions said it is not unprecedented for a single-collector sale. During a three-day sale by Sotheby’s in New York earlier this year, billionaire Bill Koch took in $21.9 million, according to an article in Wine Spectator.

Hart Davis Hart said McClendon, at the peak of his spending, was one of the most important wine buyers in the world whose philosophy was “the larger the bottle the better for the sharing.”

If he wanted to celebrate after a business meeting, or on a trip with friends, McClendon would open “a big bottle and everyone would sign it and he kept those bottles,” as mementos, Nelson said.

McClendon took great care in buying and handling the collection, which was stored in pristine, custom-built cellars at his homes in Oklahoma City, Minnesota and other locales.

McClendon bought the best Bordeaux wines in the most famous vintages and in large quantities, according to Hart Davis Hart. The auction features $1 million to $1.6 million worth of wines from the 2000 vintage.

There are also 80 lots of Pétrus, with an estimated value of $1.2 million to $1.8 million, 46 lots of Le Pin, valued up to $632,000, and 558 lots from First Growth Châteux worth up to $3.6 million.

This is not the first time the McClendon collection has been up for sale. In 2009, he also sold $2.2 million worth of wine in 2009, according to the Wall Street Journal.

“He definitely went big on some of this stuff and I’m not sure he would have opened them all,” Nelson said. “When he liked something, he bought a lot of it.”

This story was originally published August 23, 2016 at 3:56 PM with the headline "Aubrey McClendon’s wine collection expected to draw millions at auction."