Wine: pleasure and business

[Awryly]

Thought I'd introduce this topic. It's fascinating from a connoisseur's standpoint and apparently can also make you money - presumably though wine auctions. Drinking also seems to a favourite past-time of many on this site, with mixed posting results.

I have a cellar of 100+ bottles, some of it very good (eg Neudorf Homestead Pinot Noir), most of it ordinary, and some downright appalling.

A starter question: how do you value wine that had aged if you want to sell it? And where do you sell it?

quote:As New Zealanders' wine drinking tastes become more sophisticated, more people are following Duke's example and storing wine to get the extra benefits such ageing can provide. And while cellaring wine can involve considerable costs, these are often more than offset by a sharp increase in the value of the stored wine.

In some cases, the returns on properly cellared top quality wine can make more traditional investments seem pale in comparison.

Source: Sunday Star Times 25/1/04. (Duke is the CEO of Briscoes)

First condition for anybody trying to value it is how has it been stored and where.

THE KING says has two bottles of Penfolds Grange 1989/90, I drank all the rest find it hard to save with a cork screw in the hand, been told the grange could bring in $500 to $1,000 each, but you have to find a buyer.

Watching from Australia next Sunday NZ. THE KING

[Paddie]

Paddie has 20x4 packs of Guiness in the beer fridge.
Make no mistake, these will not be cellared.

Hic
Paddie[][]

And some nice Jameson's for desert tonight.

[Ricky99]

I find that most of the medium range ($50 - $100 retail) that I drink is far cheaper at auction in Wgtn than paying retail. I can go out and buy bottles of Te Mata Coleraine for about $35 at auction ($54 new) I've picked up some 1992 Matakana Antipodean for $45 a bottle a while back (normal retail $195 in Akl, or $345 in duty free akl airport)

It may just be that the Wgtn market has not caught on yet, but generally once you take off your 20% sellers premium etc, it's not a sure fire way to make money.

I however find it a great way to buy up gaps in my cellar, at prices that make them a steal.

I still drink heaps of the $10 - $15 stuff but it's nice to have a few bottles of the more expensive stuff locked away for good friends

[Awryly]

That's well worth knowing, Ricky. Where are the auctions?

[pringy]

I've got a workmate who found 6 bottles of whiskey under his house, about 60 years old! Some of the names include McCallam, Vat, White Horse, Seagrams... but it's not in a cask obviously.. so probably has no aging value despite it's age! (bottled around the 1940s)

... or is there some value to it??

[ari]

I have 2 presentation Kauri cases of Te Motu Cabernet/Merlot '93 & '94 6 bots in each.
Last price I have for '93 was STG19.50 from The Independent in Feb 95'
Be interested to know whether my investment has survived or all turned to vinegar

[Ricky99]

Dunbar Sloanes

check out http://www.dunbarsloane.com/

[Awryly]

Thanks, Ricky. The website's pretty useless as a guide to sale prices. They give the June results but not the catalogue and the October catalogue but not the results. Not very helpful at all.