Investing in Wine (Even Wine Funds Are Popping Up Now?!) ~ market folly

Friday, August 29, 2008

Investing in Wine (Even Wine Funds Are Popping Up Now?!)

I always have my eye out for interesting investment opportunities. And, this idea would definitely diversify your portfolio. Invest in wine. That's right, wine. I'm not really sure if this is just a temporary phenomenom or a secular trend building. But, I've certainly noticed a lot of hype and interest surrounding wine these days. Do note that I'm not necessarily recommending investing in wine, but I'm certainly paying attention to the trend. Are palettes around the world swapping beer for wine? It looks that way to me (albeit slowly but surely). And, I'm sure the consumer slump/recession in the U.S. will have something to say about that. But, over the past few months, I've seen more and more information popping up regarding investing in some choice wines. And, as I noticed recently in a WSJ Deal Journal article, a former UBS banker has even started up a $50 million 'wine fund' named The Bottled Asset Fund.

And, this next video is slightly older but I wanted to include it because it plays right into the investing in wine theme. If you missed it, Jim Cramer and Gary Vaynerchuk (wine guru) got together to discuss investing in wine, as seen on Vaynerchuk's Wine Library TV Show.


Lots of media attention around wine investing lately! We'll check back in a year to see if this was just a fad or if this actually has staying power.


2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Well heeled wealthy individuals had been investing in wines more than a decade ago. It has only caught media and public attention of late due to the the phenomenal performance of some of these wine funds. Accessibilty to the most prestigious labels and chateaux remains very much restricted to only a handful. Most of the new set-up wine investment firms dealt mostly with the second tier wines which may not be able to consistently generate returns comparable to the luxury labels.

Many will come but few will be left standing down the road.

market folly said...

cool, thanks for the info. i know nothing on this subject so just thought it was interesting after i noticed it picking up steam in the media