Wine - Collecting

Collecting

See also: Aging of wine, Investment wine, and Storage of wine

Outstanding vintages from the best vineyards may sell for thousands of dollars per bottle, though the broader term "fine wine" covers those typically retailing in excess of US$30–50. "Investment wines" are considered by some to be Veblen goods: those for which demand increases rather than decreases as their prices rise. The most common wines purchased for investment include those from Bordeaux and Burgundy; cult wines from Europe and elsewhere; and Vintage port. Characteristics of highly collectible wines include:

  1. A proven track record of holding well over time
  2. A drinking-window plateau (i.e., the period for maturity and approachability) that is many years long
  3. A consensus among experts as to the quality of the wines
  4. Rigorous production methods at every stage, including grape selection and appropriate barrel aging

Investment in fine wine has attracted those who take advantage of their victims' relative ignorance of this wine market sector. Such wine fraudsters often profit by charging excessively high prices for off-vintage or lower-status wines from well-known wine regions, while claiming that they are offering a sound investment unaffected by economic cycles. As with any investment, thorough research is essential to making an informed decision.

Read more about this topic:  Wine

Famous quotes containing the word collecting:

    “While I am in favor of the Government promptly enforcing the laws for the present, defending the forts and collecting the revenue, I am not in favor of a war policy with a view to the conquest of any of the slave States; except such as are needed to give us a good boundary. If Maryland attempts to go off, suppress her in order to save the Potomac and the District of Columbia. Cut a piece off of western Virginia and keep Missouri and all the Territories.”
    —Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)

    “Though collecting quotations could be considered as merely an ironic mimetism—victimless collecting, as it were ... in a world that is well on its way to becoming one vast quarry, the collector becomes someone engaged in a pious work of salvage. The course of modern history having already sapped the traditions and shattered the living wholes in which precious objects once found their place, the collector may now in good conscience go about excavating the choicer, more emblematic fragments.”
    —Susan Sontag (b. 1933)

    “What pursuit is more elegant than that of collecting the ignominies of our nature and transfixing them for show, each on the bright pin of a polished phrase?”
    —Logan Pearsall Smith (1865–1946)