Investment Wine Choices

Anyone else balling on a budget?

I'm starting a new(er) collection and trying to see if anyone has any ideas for good buys that may pay off in the long run. I dont have $ for Petrus, Le Pin, Cheval Blanc and any of the first growths but I am acquiring bottles like Palmer, Vieux Certan, Leoville Las Cases and Lynch Bages, Pontent-Canet - $200 to $400 range.

I'm also acquiring cheaper ones like Clos Du Marquis, Leoville Barton, Langoa Barton, Batailley, Duzauc, Clerc Milan, Gloria, Alter Ego and basically bottles around $80 to $150 range..

Anyone have any other picks?

I don't collect much any more as I drink too much of the stuff. If I made a great investment in something and the value climbed precipitously, the "stress" of drinking a $100 bottle that is now worth $500 might dent my experience somewhat.

Having said that, I'm looking hard at the Vintage 2011 ports...specifically Dow. WS gave Dow a 99 and it's sitting around retail in the $70-$80 range. In 2007, the same thing happened in terms of a vintage being declared - and the Dow got 100. The 2007's were about $10 cheaper and a quick web search didn't reveal any of those selling for less than at least $160 - $200 today. That's a triple in just 4 years for something that has a peak drinking time 25-45 years from now. Obviously, that rate of return chart will not continue at such pace...but still.

Hi Kevin -

I think you may be asking this of the wrong crowd. We're the "Let's buy wine and drink it!" club. I can't think of any conversations here at all that have revolved around buying wines for investment purposes.

If you're looking for that kind of advice, you might want to try a forum that's actually dedicated to it. Perhaps you could start with a website like this: http://winefolly.com/tutorial/wine-investment-guide/ and see if that leads you to like minded investors.

Good luck with it, if that's your strategy!

Actually, I have be looking at ports, although VERY loosely. The shelf time on some of them is VERY high! I have a feeling I'd be handing some of them off to my kids.

I do try other forums as well for wine ideas. I like top pool my resources. Sometimes you'd be quite surprised!

Hi Kevin,

The only time I made any money off of a wine it was quite by accident. Through a QPR recommendation I bought a case of 2000 Carraudes de Lafite on release. Thanks to the Chinese fondness for the year and the name the price of that wine shot up about 5x what I paid for it. I would have been foolish not to sell some.

An early foray into Bordeaux futures did not end well for me. Since that time I have been devoted to "pop and pour" like most of the others here. If you are patient and unemotional about it I am sure that you can make some money developing a collection.

Good luck.

I've been collecting wine (for drinking) for 20 years, and I'd say that over that time period vintage Port is the poorest choice for monetary appreciation. I've bought '60 Fonseca and '63 Warre for under $100 in last 5 years, and even '63 Graham is less than $300. '63 Nacional probably was a winner from monetary standpoint, but that's a rare bird.

I buy wine to drink, and don't particularly concern myself with ideas of what will go up= the vagaries of demand are too unpredictable (who bought Truchot , Gentaz, or Verset as an investment? Two years ago Lafite was the hot commodity- then the Chinese discovered Burgundy).

As others have stated, the participants in this forum are the "we buy it to drink it" folks.

The only wine I ever bought and then later sold off was 1982 Chateau Mouton-Rothschild. I bought six bottles when it was first released. I tried one of them about 15 years later and was disappointed with how it had evolved. So I sold off the remaining five bottles. I did make about 10X profit on them, but that was not why I had bought them in the first place.

-Paul W.

For those of you interested in 2011 vintage port (best vintage in 20+ years according to many), Astor Wines is having a 15% off sale today on all things Portugal - good deals on the 2011 vintage ports (although they only stock 4)

See the ports here:
http://www.astorwines.com/WineSearchRes ... &color=Red

They deliver to the following states, and 1st order is free shipping:
AZ, AR, CA, CO, CT, DC, FL, GA, HI, ID, IL, IN, KS, LA, ME, MI, MN, MO, NE, NJ, NM, NY, NC, OH, OR, PA, SC, TN, US, VT, WA, WV, WI, WY

[Robin Garr]

Astor Wines

Good deal, thanks for posting! When I lived on the Lower East Side for a few months in the early '90s, Astor was my home wine shop, strategically situated between my subway station and my apartment. Attractive, larger store, big selection, average regular pricing but awesome sales, as I recall. I wonder if that's changed much in 20 years.

Seems like a pretty accurate description to me! Although I think it's moved in the recent past so it may no longer be between the subway and your apartment... As a fellow in his early twenties I haven't exactly been shopping at wine stores long enough to know what it was like before

Astor moved to a fantastic new location that is MUCH larger.

Still great service. You can certainly do better pricing-wise, but as far as brick and mortar retail it's not bad.

That area is not called the Lower East Side, however.

I think the definition of LES has contracted, it used to include what we now call East Village, Nolita, Chinatown, etc as well as the current Orchard/Grand area. I guess Astor Wines would be NoHo, but I usually just say "near NYU"
Astor is a good store, with decent prices that the Tues 15% off sales for a region tend to make very good prices
Good service, good storage, good selection.