Wine as an investment - initial thoughts

AN OLD friend needed advice on how to manage his collection of wines which had been purchased some 10 years ago. Following our discussions it occurred to me that there may be others who may have also accumulated a sizeable collection of wines and need help and advice on how best to get the most out of that collection. This week's column attempts to provide guideposts as to what advice to look for and where and how to find it.

People who "collect" wine fall roughly into two groups. One is made up of people who did not really start off to collect wine. They began by learning to drink wine with their meals, found that they liked the taste and the combination, began to drink wine fairly often with or without their meals and in due course built up a collection of wines initially meant for personal consumption but now has assumed proportions in excess of their needs. They had bought the wines they liked or wanted to drink, then with more experience and confidence the selection became more and more eclectic, and so the collection became larger and larger. Somewhere along the line they had also learnt that buying en primeur made good sense, and their collection then began to include en primeur as well as collector's items! The result after 20 years of this pattern of buying is not difficult to imagine - a collection running into thousands of bottles!

The other class of wine investor is the true-blue investor, who sets out to build a portfolio of wines in place of stocks and shares. He has heard that wine gives good yields, even better than stocks and shares, and that you never lose because if the wine goes down in price, you can always drink it rather than sell it at a loss - something you cannot do with stocks and shares! It also confers a sort of status symbol to be able to claim that you also invested in wine. Someone like him does not need this column.