Billionaire Koch Brother Wants to Unload $15 Million Worth of Wine

Wait ’til you hear the reason why…

Billionaire industrialist William “Bill” Koch, whose brothers Charles and David are controversial GOP megadoners the Koch Brothers, is about to unload 20,000 bottles of wine valued at $15 million – but not because he needs the money. 

Koch, whose politically powerful bros Bernie Sanders regularly calls out on the stump, says he simply has too much wine to fit into his incredibly lavish private cellars, including the one at his Palm Beach estate constructed of 150-year-old bricks (above). Tough break, Bill.

“With around 43,000 bottles, I could not possibly consume everything in my cellar,” Koch said in a statement according to Bloomberg, “so I am delighted to offer this selection to allow collectors all over the world to enjoy the glorious moments that come with these wines.” 

The wildly extravagant wine sale at Sotheby’s from May 19–21 represents close to half of Koch’s collection and was acquired over the course of nearly 40 years.

More than 120 lots are from the highly coveted Château Latour, including one that consists of six 1961 magnums, worth $42,000 to $60,000 alone. 

There are also more than 80 lots of Château Mouton Rothschild; one, composed of 10 bottles of Mouton’s 1945 vintage, is expected to sell for $80,000 to $120,000. 

In the late 1980s, Koch paid $500,000 for four bottles of wine that had supposedly once belonged to Thomas Jefferson but were later determined to be fake. Whoops!