Bottles of Penfolds Grange are up for grabs at Armitage Auctions

Earlier this year a 1951 bottle of Penfolds Grange Hermitage sold for $122,000.

On Thursday, online auctions of more than 90 bottles of the vintage wine are set to conclude. The collection, which includes vintages as recent as 2016 and dating back as far as 1959.

Armitage Auctions began selling the vintage bottles on behalf of a vendor from Burnie earlier this week. The auctions are part of 300 lots of alcohol, including wine, spirits and whiskey, being sold.

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Auctioneer Neil O'Brien said the wine collection was the biggest Armitage had ever put up for auction.

Based on sales he had observed online over the years, Mr O'Brien said he expected the prices of the vintage bottles would only continue to increase in the future.

"The wines have been correctly stored in a cool, dark room for the majority of their lives," he said. "They're definitely for collecting more than drinking, at least that's the case for the really old ones."

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The vendor, John Clarke, was first introduced to Armitage Auctions in 1961 while he was searching for items to furnish a hotel in Wynyard, which he had recently purchased.

Mr Clarke explained that after running the hotel for several years he had decided to open a wine and spirits store within it.

After opening the bottle shop, he began purchasing large quantities of alcohol to sell to customers, which inadvertently led to the establishment of a wine collection.

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"All the wine for sale at the auction is leftover stock from when I owned the bottle shop," Mr Clarke said.

"Most of the wine was actually bought from a wholesaler in Launceston."

Mr Clarke said he is not a big drinker and is selling the wine because he is moving to Melbourne to be closer to his children.

"I'm 85 now, my wife and I have been together for 63 years and all of our children are on the mainland, except for one in Singapore," he said. "The money we're expecting to get from the wine is going to help a lot in paying for our new apartment."

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