Most expensive bottles of wine sold at Sotheby's auction

The two bottles of 1945 vintage were among the 600 to be made by top Burgundy producer Romanee-Conti right after the Second World War.

The lot notes described the wine as "rare and wonderful", "exotic...with seemingly everlasting power - a wine at peace with itself".

Moments after the first bottle sold for a whopping $558,000, the second one was bought for $496,000.

Meanwhile, the three bottles of 1937 vintage sold for an impressive $310,000 each.

The bottles, both the 1945 vintage and the 1937 vintage, were being sold as part of a collection of 100 wine bottles from the personal cellar of wine producer Robert Drouhin.

Nine of the 100 bottles attracted six figure sums, and the total collection sold for a whopping $7.3mn.

The eye-popping sums commanded by the five bottles broke previous records of the most expensive bottle of wine ever sold.

The previous record holder was a six-litre bottle Cheval-Blanc 1947, which was sold in Geneva in 2010 for $304,375.

Meanwhile, the record for a standard-sized wine bottle was $233,000 - a 1869 vintage of Chateau Lafite-Rothschild that was sold in Hong Kong in 2010.