On October 10, one of Asia's most remarkable private wine collections starts hitting the auction block. Christie's Hong Kong will offer more than 800 lots from the personal cellar of Henry Tang, the former Hong Kong financial secretary who has spent five decades amassing bottles from the world's most storied estates.

The line-up reads like a greatest-hits album of fine wine: Domaine de la Romanée-Conti, Henri Jayer Burgundy, Bordeaux First Growths, plus Pétrus, Lafleur and Le Pin. There's breadth too — Champagne, Napa Valley, Spanish, Italian and Australian wines, much of it cellared under Tang's own care for decades.

Standout lots include a magnum of Henri Jayer's Vosne-Romanée Cros Parantoux 1996, estimated at HK$180,000–260,000 (roughly $23,000–33,000), and a pair of 1993 bottles pegged at HK$160,000–220,000. Tang has form here: at a 2013 Christie's sale, 809 lots from his cellar fetched HK$48.05 million (about $6.13 million), with six magnums of DRC Romanée-Conti 1995 alone hitting HK$1.21 million.

The auction also opens Christie's Wine & Spirits Department's 60th-anniversary celebrations — its first wine auction was in London in 1966 — and lands during Christie's 40th year in Asia.

Tang's story is woven into Hong Kong's rise as a wine capital. As financial secretary he pushed through wine duty cuts in 2007, with the remaining duty scrapped in 2008. Those reforms turned the city into a gateway for the Asian wine trade and a serious international auction hub — which is why sales like this happen in Hong Kong at all.

His collecting began in the 1970s, driven by curiosity about how different grape varieties express themselves. It led him from Burgundy and Bordeaux to obscure estates and then-emerging regions, and to genuine friendships with winemakers. He befriended Henri Jayer himself, spotting a stash of magnums in the winemaker's cellar in the 1980s and jokingly asking to be remembered at retirement. Jayer kept his word, offering Tang a substantial parcel after he retired in 1987.

For Tang, the sale isn't about the money. "Every bottle carries memories," he says — people, places and conversations behind each label. But for collectors and curious travellers alike, it's a rare public glimpse into a cellar built over half a century, in a city that has quietly become one of the world's fine-wine capitals.