As a Sommelier, This Is Why I Hate When People Invest in Wine

Wine is meant to be drunk, not collected

In an old mine in the south of England lies $ 1 billion worth of wine.

Much like in real life, only a handful of people own most of that billion. Some of them have collections that run into the tens of millions of bottles.

I hate that.

If you read any of my wine writing you’ll (hopefully) know that I am not a stuffy kinda wine pro. I don’t care, for instance, if you want to decant a bottle through a piece of kitchen roll into a plastic jug. I saw once watched one of the most revered winemakers in the world do this with a $2k+ bottle of Port. He didn’t care about ceremony either.

As such, I don’t follow many of the “rules” around wine culture. And that includes holding wine for investment purposes.

The liquid in that bottle is meant to be drunk, not sit as a line on a spreadsheet. It’s meant to facilitate a good time, perhaps a bit of fornication. Not bolster your net worth.

It’s not designed to be sat in an abandoned mine until you die, thus passing on the line in the spreadsheet to your kid who sells it to someone else who wants that name on their spreadsheet.

F**k that.

Most people don’t know how to invest in wine making it a pointless, expensive exercise

A man once gave me 12 bottles of wine from his father’s “investment cellar.” The father had recently died having of course, never drunk any of the bottles that were gifted to me.

Every single bottle in that box was undrinkable. Including, I’m sorry to say, a bottle of 1975 Penfolds Grange which fetches around $990 on the secondary market.

Because I’m not interested in selling a crappy bottle of wine (it would feel like selling a house when you know it’s about to fall down), I opened it with some wine industry friends. And promptly tipped $1000 down the drain.

Many people used to visit my wine store either to buy wine for investment or to sell me old wine that I could guarantee had been improperly stored (for the record, the correct environment is dark, damp, cool, constant temperature, and free from vibrations).

The only wine that is ever sold for a good or decent profit is the stuff that is sat in places like that old mine. Places where investors can prove the conditions the wine has been stored in.

Even then, it’s unlikely you’re ever going to make a whole lot of cash. A lot of wine investment is speculation —no one truly knows which domaines will become popular and which ones will be, for instance, involved in scandals that plummet the value of their bottles.

It’s Not. Worth. It.

Wine investment is an unregulated industry. Be prepared to be scammed

Wine investment is a highly unregulated industry that is shrouded in mystery. As such it’s highly susceptible to scams.

Ever heard of Rudi Kurniawan? He counterfeited millions of dollars worth of wine which eventually landed him in federal prison.

It feels like every day there’s news of a new wine investment scam. It doesn’t help that, like I say, wine for investment has to be properly stored so most of the time, people buying it don’t even see it. It goes straight from the winery into their chosen storage.

There are few fungible investments that you wouldn’t consider inspecting before parting with your hard-earned cash. But even if you did look at a case of unopened Domaine de la Romanée Conti, would you even know what you’re looking at?

Rudi Kurniwaran’s escapades would suggest often not.

Scammers prey on the fact that most people don’t know enough about wine to know what they’re doing. Even people like me — who have dedicated their lives to the grape —wouldn’t know what to look for (or indeed what to taste) in these expensive bottles because so few of us can afford to drink the sort of wine that investors love so much.

Which segues nicely onto my next point…

Much like houses, investors f**k up prices for the rest of us

Wine speculation has the same effect that property investors have on the housing market.

It prices normal people with normal salaries out. And that includes most of the wine trade itself.

In my experience, wine investors are rarely the people who would benefit — or get the most enjoyment — out of the bottles they buy.

And speculative investing is pushing prices well and above what they should be. A couple of years ago, my friend bought a bottle of Burgundy for €30 which could fetch €400 on the secondary market today.

That’s bullshit.

But that’s what wine investment does. It ruins it for the people who aren’t interested in investing and just want to drink the damn bottles. And that’s the saddest thing of all.

The most important reason NOT to invest in wine — its purpose is to be drunk. Nothing more.

I once drank my whole wine collection.

I was about to sell everything I owned and travel indefinitely. I didn’t want to risk putting the wine in storage (aka my mum’s garage) for it to be ruined in a heatwave. I certainly didn’t want to sell any of it.

So I drank all 300 bottles of it.

I have a moral objection to wine investment because I believe that is not wine’s purpose. Wine’s purpose is to be drunk. Enjoyed.

And I bloody well enjoyed every single bottle I opened during that time.

By all means, store a few bottles for a rainy day if you’re so inclined. But you should have a plan for every single bottle of wine you own. Even if that plan is to hand it over to your kids so they can enjoy 60-year-old wine, you want to know it goes down their gullets, not into some investor’s dusty collection.

For me, wine is emotional. It’s living and breathing. It’s culture. It’s nature. It’s history. It has shaped our world. Every time you open a bottle of something made by a small winery with love, care, and attention there’s a whole world to be discovered in 750ml of alcoholic grape juice.

The saddest thing about wine investors is that they see wine as exactly that — an investment — when it’s anything but.

This is the bit where I drop the mic, open a bottle of something that would make an investor weep (I still have a couple of things left in that aforementioned garage), and bloody well enjoy myself.

Just as Bacchus would have wanted.

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This article is for informational purposes only. It should not be considered Financial or Legal Advice. Not all information will be accurate. Consult a financial professional before making any major financial decisions.