Lock, stock and wine barrel: Investing in wine

Mine is a bottle of Plaisir de Merle Charles Marais 2013. It’s cellared (or make that cupboarded, considering the pokey places people my age call home) for my enjoyment later.

The South African wine industry still relies heavily on wine collecting as much as it does on drink-now wine. Collecting comes with time, as you get a feel for the different wines and regions in the country. There’s value in having wines from these areas to explore winemaking heritage in South Africa, but this can also be an investment.

According to Knight Frank’s latest Luxury Investment Index, wine is now the most popular luxury investment globally, overtaking collectable cars in the past 12 months. The report reveals the reason for this is the exclusivity associated with some wines, as limited volumes are produced.

The concept of wine as an investment has become more prevalent on a local level as well, and just this past week at the 2017 Nederburg Auction in Cape Town, six bottles of the 1977 Zonnebloem Shiraz were sold for R13 000.

Michael van Deventer, Vinoteque and E-commerce manager, says selecting a good investment wine is like picking a stock on the JSE. Generally speaking, desirability is what makes a particular wine a worthy investment, he says. Therefore, for a wine to reach investment status, it needs to reach maturity and rarity first.

According to Elize Coetzee, cellar master at Zonnebloem wines, another factor is that a vast volume of high-end SA wines are of the white variety, but the global consensus is still only reds are true investments.

Like with any investment, Coetzee warns that wines can lose value over time. “Wine is a commodity and, like any other commodity, will suffer with shifts in the economy. Other factors that could cause an investment wine to become less valuable include a shift in ownership of the winery, a change of winemaker, or poor storage.”