Connoisseurs say a bottle is never worth the wine it guards. Pragmatists argue that sadly, a wine is never worth the bottle it is contained in. Somewhere between this lies a potential gap that has been occupied and worked by that breed of wine lovers called investors.
There are two kinds of investors: those who buy and sell wine bottles in an effort to gain monetarily from such transactions. And then there is that other breed, which prefers to buy to collect and hoard. Their only objective is to amass precious bottles till they have a sizeable collection, in some cases, big enough to occupy the entire vault facilities of a large bank! And, every now and then, they dip into it to bring out a veritable vinous string of pearls?a vertical or a horizontal (explained later)?to taste with wine aficionados, writers, critiques, and lovers.
It is not as altruistic as I make it sound; men will always be boys. From comparisons across urinals to their prized assets in the parking lot, to across a wine tasting table, egos clash and emanate a stench of one-upmanship larger and louder than the combined bouquet of all wines being tasted.
Welcome to the world of wine investment. It?s what you get when a banker spawns with the devil-child of Bacchus and Satan. The result is a person who doesn?t know whether he likes something, but will try and acquire it anyway.
But all wine collectors aren?t so self-obsessed souls with a broken sense of self-realisation. They are merely people who have done well and bought plenty of wine. But why buy wine, ask the commoner us. Why invest so much money in something that, like a car driven by a lady driver, is bound to crash. The reason is simple: wine, for a while, matures. As it matures, it improves. The taste ameliorates, the aromas become more profound and its texture takes on a silky velout? note that only age can impress. During this stage of blossoming, the demand for that wine will naturally rise, people will be willing to put down more money for it.
Some people, who can taste a wine when still young and predict this oncoming goodness, will buy large stocks and put them away in a safe place till the right time to commercialise cometh. Then, when critiques and the wine lovers the world over start talking about how that certain wine, after ten years of sleeping, is now waking up to a beautiful morning, our friend will produce forth his stock, waking them too from their slumber.
Wines are of two types: those meant for ageing and those meant to be consumed while still young. The latter is the most drunk category, accounting for almost 90% of the market in volume. This is what you and I would drink on an every-day basis, this is the range that crowds the shelves at our local shop. These wines are best drunk within two-three years of being produced. They will not improve drastically on ageing, and long-term ageing will kill them faster than a shot of heroin to the heart.
The other kind, those that are small in number but a significant chunk in value will age?not just for months but years and decades?and with each passing year, add some value to their original price tag. This will happen till the wine is improving. As is with humans and age, there will come a point in the life of these wines too when they will stop improving and will start their journey down the other side of the hill. This is when they will start getting cheaper, till one day when they are worth no more than the bottle that holds them.
At this point, their historical value may precede their tactile significance and relevance, thereby endowing them with a certain mystical perceived value. Someone may wish to own such a bottle for an entirely personal emotional connect?meaningful vintage (like year of birth, marriage), region or winery?and will still be willing to pay a high price for it, regardless what becomes of the wine within.
The wine within, when capable of enduring more than a century of ageing in the best of examples?think Bordeaux reds and sweet white wines from Sauternes?during its prime years, will command a price that will make the most stoic of jaws drop. Kip Forbes set the trend when he paid ?1,05,000 (in the late ?80s) for a bottle from the 1787 vintage, allegedly from the private collection of Thomas Jefferson (the bottle had the etched initials). From that point on, many people went on to spend six-digit amounts ?from the late Dodi Al-Fayed to Marvin Shanken, the editor of Wine Spectator. The best bit, many of these over-150-year-old bottles were opened and drunk. Not all may have been at their best but there can exist few parallels to imbibing a liquid so ancient. Also, if I paid in such excess for a bottle, I?d probably drain it to the last drop, even if it near-kills me with foul disgust.
So how does it work? Every year, regions with wines of holding repute will host a tasting of their current vintages which are still in oak barrels and two years away from being bottled. Learned palates will gather and taste this inky liquid and ascertain how it will turn out in the decades to come. It?s not all on the palate as they also analyse weather charts?one off-season rain can be all it takes to make or break a vintage price. Subsequently, initial pricing sensors are floated and people place orders. In the end, it all comes down to demand and supply.
Investor friends of mine have given me some advice. In bad vintages, when nature played truant, invest in wines of good houses. Too fragile are their reputes to make bad wine, ever. So, they might reduce quantities but will make rich wine, which will still be cheaper than their product in finer years. On the other hand, in a good vintage, buying from even the small houses is a wise decision as everyone benefits from the goodness of the weather and makes outstanding wine.
Having summarised that, the other thing is to keep abreast of the market trends. Not different from the stock market, or buying art but the difference is that stock markets collapse and art has a way of losing money too. Wine, although it requires a very precise expertise, can be a good place to hedge and park capital. Worst case, if markets turn on you, there will still be some good wine to see you through it.
In the end, the most commonly heard thing about wine investments, especially in exceptionally dated stock, is that there are never great wines but always great bottles. What value can be ascertained to a piece of glass that has lived through entire centuries and two wars? Even though the wine within may not amount to much, a mere oxidised faded version of its former glorious self, the bottle has survived and lives on encore. Such a bottle is a joy in itself to behold, for it makes us wonder the deepest and darkest thoughts of the eternal and the perishable; of seemingly limitless longevity and time-bound existence. The philosophical dichotomy can be inconceivably humongous and consequently humbling. A product of this nature is then invaluable. It is an article of awe, no matter how much is paid for it or whatever happened to the liquid asset it was meant to guard.
The writer is a sommelier