Wine Investment - A truly liquid asset

Past Lessons and General Pointers

Wine Appreciation - lessons from the past...

• Very few vintages have appreciated significantly within the first five years following release 'en primeur', whereas most vintages have shown uplift after ten years.
• Classed Growth wines that are both produced in large volumes and are recognised as high quality tend to have provided the most stable appreciation patterns.
• Scarcity attracts a premium at the outset, but such wines can fluctuate at the mercy of narrow markets.
• The 'penny share' phenomenon can apply to wines, but only very occasionally. Few inexpensive wines have demonstrated long-term appreciation, especially when the costs of holding the wine are taken into account.

...and some general pointers:

• Store your wines in bond rather than paying duty and VAT up-front. You may not recover these costs upon resale.
• Your wines should be stored at all times in a recognised wine storage environment, and you should keep all necessary documentation in case it is necessary to authenticate provenance.
• Make sure your wines are insured at current value.
• Buy - and store - in sealed, original cases. These contribute to demonstrating provenance and care.
• Costs of storage are pro-rata to the number of cases and costs of resale are pro-rata to value.
• There is no particular benefit in buying several cases of one wine.
• A run of consecutive vintages of highly rated wine can attract a premium.
• As a general rule of thumb, larger bottle formats age slower than their smaller cousins.
• Consider adding a few large format wines en primeur as these big bottles are relatively rare and often command a significant early re-sale premium over standard bottle sizes.
• Whilst buying en-primeur is an excellent method of ensuring a sound portfolio of wines, do not over-look the potential value of older wines from great vintages.