Lafite at $230,000 a Bottle Means Boom for Hong Kong Wine Vaults

Fergus Fung swipes his card across a sensor and waits as his face is scanned by a computer to match his profile. A steel door opens and the Hong Kong entrepreneur enters a vault that holds his treasure of Bordeaux and Burgundy.

This is the Hong Kong Wine Vault, one of more than 15 repositories that have been set up in the past three years in the Chinese city as it overtook London and New York as the world’s biggest auction market for top wine labels like Chateau Lafite, Domaine Romanée-Conti and Krug. The temperature is a constant 13 Celsius and humidity is 75 percent, protected by 4 inches of insulation on the walls, ceiling and floors.