Investment Grade Wines

There are generally two different types of wine; early consumption wine (which is ready to drink a year or two from production) and more sophisticated, higher calibre wines (which begin to enter their maturity for consumption after 6-8 years). These are known as investment grade wines.
The fine wine investment market is a market for investment grade wines whose maturing process will continue for up to 30 or 50 years.
The investment grade wines with the strongest track record are undoubtedly the 'Blue Chip' clarets from Bordeaux.
Of the 4,000+ Chateaux in the Bordeaux region, there are only 20-30 producing wines which we would recommend for investing purposes. Among these are the famous 'first growth' wines from the original classification created by Napoleon III in 1855; the Lafite Rothschild, Margaux, Chateau Haut Brion, Latour and since 1973 the Mouton Rothschild. In addition, we might include wines such as Petrus, Ausone, Cheval Blanc, Lafleur, Yquem, Le Pin and some of the second grade wines, such as La Mission Haut-Brion, Leoville Les Cases and Montrose.

While any investor will naturally be biased towards the great names from Bordeaux, we also believe that there are some exciting opportunities from other wine producing parts of France like the Rhone Valley and Burgundies . Also other countries like Italy, Chile and Australia have shown interesting performance levels over the past few years. Although these are younger markets, top performing wines in these areas are already showing some dynamic returns as well as lower entry levels in many instances. We also look into some of the top brands in champagne's along with some longer term holdings within high end whiskies and Brandy's which in some cases have shown fantastic returns.