Wine as an investment

In this week's class, Carol mentioned that most people drink wine almost too soon now, and fewer people are collecting wine for investment purposes. There are many reasons for this, aside from people's shrinking attention-span. Cellars can be expensive to own and maintain, and for beginners, it is difficult to tell which wines are truly investment worthy.

Nevertheless, for people interested in investing in wine but do not want to physically store the wine themselves, I found that there are wine investment funds that are dedicated to buying wines with growth potential, and there are stock exchanges for wine (such as Liv-ex).

Here is the wine portfolio of the (UK) Wine Investment Fund, all their wines are stored in government bonded warehouses to avoid VAT. 

There are many reasons fine wine can be a good investment. The good investment-grade wine provides good risk-adjusted returns, and serve well as a portfolio diversifier. According to Liv-ex, fine wine investment has seen consistent annual return of about 12.9% since 1988. Wine investments can also be used as an inflation or currency hedge. Wine investment has existed for hundreds of years, and it is not going away. I am wondering if there are potential business opportunities to do crowd-funded wine investment, offering investors the options to "drink or sell" in a couple years. 

Sweet and Savory

HELP - if anyone has ever seen or knows how to buy a case of the wine pictured below, PLEASE let me know. I haven't been able to track it down in the US. Or if anyone has any tips on tools/apps to find less common bottles, let me know!

That aside, when is the last time you were served a sweet wine before dessert? How about some fortified wine with duck three ways?

It WORKS, and I've seen a fair amount of pairing of fortified wine with duck, deer, and lamb in Western Europe. I still have yet to see this kind of a pairing in a US restaurant. If anyone has any ideas on why this might be, I would love to hear your thoughts! To me, given how sugar-loving the average American palette is, relative to the average Western European palette, it makes intuitive sense that the opposite would be true and there would be a greater abundance of sweet wines paired with savory food. How different are they really from a boozier soda?

Washington Wines!

It was so wonderful to hear Carol speak so highly of Washington wines on Thursday. As I have mentioned before, I was living in Seattle prior to coming to the GSB and am a huge fan of Washington wines. Before moving to Seattle, I had no idea that Washington had such a prominent wine industry. I still remember when went to the grocery store in Seattle and noticed a PNW wine section - it was there that my love of Washington red wine began. Many of these wines had "Columbia Valley" written on the labels, a region I was unfamiliar with before moving to the PNW.

As Carol mentioned in class, Washington produces some incredible wine (especially for a reasonable price point). I love Cabernet Sauvignon, which happens to be a very popular grape in Washington. While I was living in Seattle, I almost solely bought PNW wines once I became familiar with the different wineries/producers. I found the quality to be very high for the price point (I usually would spend between $15 - $35 on a bottle for a dinner etc.) and I liked the idea of buying "local".

There is a wine producing area just outside of Seattle, Woodinville, which is home to several well known wineries such as Chateau St Michelle, DeLille Cellars, and Januik Winery. Woodinville is about a 30 minute drive outside of the city and my friends and I would often go wine tasting for the afternoon in the summer months. There is also a bike path that takes you from Seattle proper to Woodinville which is such a fun summer day activity. It is about a 20 mile bike ride (one way).

It will be interesting to see if Washington State wines continue to grow in popularity over the next couple of years.