Investing in Wines

Filed in archive Wine News on January 16, 2008

Most people buy wine to drink. Let's face it, that $12 bottle of Merlot isn't going to hold its value for very long. It will be great to drink with tonight's dinner but beyond that? Well, it's not quite meant for cellaring. However, many high-end wines are meant for cellaring. And these days, that means holding onto them for their value just as much (if not more than) their drinkability.

From Newsday:

Wine is so hot, with demand growing from new wealth centers and palates in China and Russia, that the prices of even some second-tier wines are rising at rates that make the dow jones industrial average look as if it's measuring the performance of low-risk municipal bonds.

The jump in prices is causing collectors to liquidate parts of their cellars. There are wine investment funds, and there is even an electronic trading exchange in London for fine wine. It's up 39 percent this year, trailing gains in oil by only 7 points.

For many, all this sounds too much like the legendary - and popped - tech bubble that cost investors millions of dollars earlier this decade. For others, who don't see demand ebbing any time soon, wine has become a surprising, though highly risky, way to produce returns from an urbane hobby.

Site like Vinfolio target wine investors and allow them to keep track of their wine cellars using Vinfolio's software (called VinCellarâ„¢) for free. There's also a blog that gives wine collecting advice - it's called (aptly enough) The Wine Collector. I admit that I've been bitten by the wine investment bug. No, I don't have a cellar worth thousands of dollars (not by any means, though I wish that were true!), but my husband and I have picked up a bottle here and a bottle there mainly for their values. What about you? Do you have any investment wines? Do you think investing in wine is too risky, or is it worthwhile?