The sale of the world's largest private wine cellar got off to a corker of a start yesterday as hundreds of bottles sold for £4.3 million sterling - (£4.6 million) far above expectations.

And that means connoisseurs have already forked out far more than the £3.54 million sterling raised by Sotheby's sale of Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber's cellar earlier this year.

The most expensive lot on the first day of the two-day auction at Christie's in central London was an imperiale - a single bottle equal to eight ordinary-sized bottles - of Chateau Cheval-Blanc 1947.

The claret was expected to sell for £30,000 sterling, but instead went to an anonymous private collector bidding by telephone for £68,200 sterling.