Vintage Te Mata Coleraine wine collection up for grabs at Hawke's Bay wine auction

Tickets for the Hawke's Bay Wine Auction are up for grabs. Photo / Supplied

The 250 tickets to the Hawke's Bay Wine Auction pre-tasting event have sold out, with all focus now on selling out 650 tickets for the main event.

The pre-tasting event, on August 19, provides people with an opportunity to sample the 41 auction lots up for grabs on September 19 at the Wine Auction event.

For wine connoisseurs, a 24-vintage collection of Te Mata Coleraine, 1994-2018 (minus non-producing 2012) will also be auctioned.

General Manager Elisha Milmine said what made the vintage collection special was the fact that the Te Mata Coleraine was a wine which sold out every year, sometimes even before it hit the shelves.

Having 24 vintages in a row, was "very rare"; people who bought them did not give them up easily, and they were usually sold for a premium.

"Opportunities to acquire a piece of New Zealand heritage like this are exceedingly rare."

Milmine said in 2018 a Coleraine vertical collection [a collection of every wine in a row] of 32 vintages went for $19,000 at auction.

This year's collection would see some of Hawke's Bay's "most prestigious" wineries providing 41 unique, never-to-be-repeated lots of wine, many of which were specially blended for the event.

All auction proceeds would go to Cranford Hospice and Milmine said they were hoping to raise approximately the same amount they did in 2019, which was $241,000.

WineWorks director and Hawke's Bay Wine Auction's principal sponsor Tim Nowell-Usticke said they were pleased to continue into their sixth year of partnership with the event.

Tickets for the auction can be bought on the Hawke's Bay Wine Auction website.