HOSPICES DE BEAUNE

The Hospices de Beaune sale is the charity auction of the year’s new wine from the Hospices’ own vineyards, held on the third Sunday of November under the Halles de Beaune, opposite the Hôtel-Dieu: some fifty cuvées sold by Sotheby’s by the barrel, en primeur, with one barrel, the Pièce des Présidents, sold for a cause chosen each year. It is the middle day of the Trois Glorieuses, between a black-tie dinner at the Clos de Vougeot on the Saturday and the Paulée de Meursault on the Monday. The proceeds keep the hospital going.

The hospital’s founder, Nicolas Rolin, had his motto set into its floor tiles for his wife: “Seulle estoile”, my only star.

The Hôtel-Dieu

Nicolas Rolin, chancellor of Burgundy, and his wife Guigone de Salins founded the Hôtel-Dieu on 4 August 1443 as a hospital for the poor, in a country left ruined by the Hundred Years’ War, by the écorcheurs, by famine and by plague. It was consecrated on 31 December 1452 and remained a hospital until 1971; it is a museum now. The Room of the Poor is fifty metres long, and the chapel was placed so that the bedridden could hear Mass. Rogier van der Weyden’s altarpiece hangs in the museum, and the glazed roofs, in red, brown, yellow and green, are replicas made between 1902 and 1907.

The first vines were given in 1457, by Jean Guillotte le Verrier, and the domaine was built from five centuries of gifts and bequests. It has some sixty hectares now, in nearly a hundred and twenty parcels from Chablis to Pouilly, and Ludivine Griveau has been its régisseur since 2015.

The wine was first sold at public auction in 1859, by candle, a custom since abandoned. The sale was held in the cour d’honneur of the Hôtel-Dieu until 1924, in its old cuverie from 1925 to 1958, and under the Halles since 1959. It had a name abroad from 1924, and in 1934 the Confrérie des Chevaliers du Tastevin made the weekend into the Trois Glorieuses. A barrel has been sold for charity since 1945.

Christie’s ran the sale from 2005 to 2020, and Sotheby’s since 2021. In 2006 Aubert de Villaine and Bernard Pivot used it to launch the bid of the Climats of Burgundy to UNESCO, which inscribed them in 2015. The Pièce des Présidents made €800,000 in 2021, and in 2022 the sale made a record €28,978,000 for 802 barrels.

The Sale

The wine is sold in the barrel, the pièce, of 228 litres, some 288 bottles. The buyer of the first barrel of a series may take more at the same hammer price. Each barrel must then go to a négociant-éleveur in Burgundy, who raises it for twelve to twenty-four months before bottling, and the buyer’s name may go on the label.

Bids are taken in the room, where seats are booked in advance, by telephone, online, or in writing beforehand, and every bidder registers with Sotheby’s first. The prices are usually well above the trade’s, though the results give some indication of the trend, and the sale is read as the barometer of the vintage.

The money goes to the hospital, and at present to a new building of fifteen thousand square metres, costing €86 million, due to be finished early in 2028. After the sale the Hospices give a gala dinner in the Bastion, the Tour des Cordeliers. Through the weekend there are concerts and shows in the streets, and since 1986 a half-marathon through the vineyards.

In 2025, the 165th sale, the Pièce des Présidents, a Pommard 1er Cru Les Rugiens for the first time, made €400,000, and the sale €18.3 million for 539 barrels. The 166th is on Sunday 15 November 2026, at half past two; its Pièce de Charité is given to the fight against rare diseases, for ARSLA and Debra France, under a poster by Téo Transinne.

What to Know

It is held on the third Sunday of November, in the afternoon. The 2027 date has not been announced.

Seats in the room are reserved through Sotheby’s, and bidding of any kind requires registration with Sotheby’s beforehand. Ten reserve cuvées are shown to private buyers at a tasting under the Hôtel-Dieu, at a price; the 2026 dates are still to come.

A lounge suit. Nothing is published for the sale; the Saturday dinner at the Clos de Vougeot is black tie.

Beaune is reached by TGV through Dijon or Lyon. Stay in the town, within walking distance of the Halles.

The mistake is to think of a lot as bottles. A pièce is a barrel of 228 litres, some 288 bottles, and it must be raised by a négociant-éleveur for twelve to twenty-four months before there is anything to drink.

The Court

Hospices de Beaune is not the Court’s own. Seats in the room under the Halles, and a place at the dinner in the Bastion afterwards, are sought on a member’s behalf, and the Court arranges the whole of it: getting there, where to stay in Beaune, and the table afterward. The Court is at Meursault the next day for La Paulée.

How one becomes a member is set out under Admission.