Fine wine news

Recent wine auctions have illustrated the new fascination with Burgundy fine wine, yet wine author Charles Metcalfe has questioned the success of wine investment in the region over Bordeaux.

Traditionally, Bordeaux is where investors seek the biggest returns, but over the past few months interest has turned to Burgundy, and Domaine de la Romanee-Conti in particular, as an alternative.

Some investors have been making good returns on DRC for years, but with more people in the market some commentators might say that this will not last.

Mr Metcalfe explained that there is a considerable amount of Chateau Lafite Rothschild produced each year, while DRC makes much smaller quantities.

"So if demand really does get going for these top Burgundies, you could see some very significant price jumps," he commented.

"But they've never really been relevant to the investment market before, because there's just not enough of them to go around – you can't really make a market out of them because the quantities are so small."

He highlighted the difficulty of getting hold of these wines, adding that if investors do not buy them when they are first released, they rarely make it to the secondary market.

The wine author also gave some advice to people approaching wine investment for the first time, urging them to concentrate on the best chateaux in Bordeaux and making sure that they hold their wine for some time.

"If you really want to invest in wine, bear in mind that the real price increases [come] from holding the wine over quite a long period, unless you trade a lot and are going to be really active in the market," he remarked.

"Historically the wines that have always performed well have been the top wines from the top year," Mr Metcalfe said, explaining that a wine such as Chateau Lafite "is pretty wonderful and it will probably go up in price".

Posted by Helen Jenkins