08/08/2026
Please don’t hate me.
When I opened my first wine business in 1984, you could buy a good bottle of wine for under £5, and a great one for around £25. Today, you can still find a decent bottle for under £10, but thanks, in part, to people like me investing in wine, a truly exceptional bottle can now cost £1,000 or more.
Back in 1985, on a rare and special occasion, I could just about afford to decant a bottle of, say, 1976 Château Lafite Rothschild and put it on the table. Today, I couldn’t, and frankly, I wouldn’t dream of doing it.
If you had bought a case of 1982 Château Lafite Rothschild en primeur for £300 in 1985, it would be worth around £20,000 today. That’s quite an annual return. That might be why you hate me. I hate myself a little, too.
Today, only the ultra-wealthy, and perhaps the Rothschilds themselves, can comfortably afford to drink Lafite. Even then, very few bottles are actually consumed. Most sit quietly in bonded warehouses, slowly appreciating in value and occasionally changing hands.
Ironically, I believe this lack of consumption is beginning to affect investment performance. Historically, as great wines were consumed, they became scarcer, and that scarcity helped drive prices higher. Today, with so many bottles being bought primarily as investments, that scarcity principle is being undermined. There are simply enormous quantities of top wines sitting untouched in warehouses. The result? Top-tier prices are stagnating, while second, and third-tier wines are performing better than many expected.
Look at Burgundy. Bordeaux became too expensive, so investors moved into Burgundy. Some say Asian investors, over excitingly investing, artificially caused the prices to skyrocket between the years 2015 and 2021, and, more recently, those prices have been parachuting back to earth.
Bordeaux does, however, have one enormous advantage over Burgundy; longevity. Bordeaux wines can age extraordinarily well. I’ve been privileged to drink Bordeaux more than 140 years old that was still sublime. And longevity matters enormously when you are talking about investment. To this day I’ve never had a Burgundy more than 50 years old that I thought was genuinely enjoyable. I’m sure someone will now send me a list of exceptions, but that has been my experience.
As wine lovers, we have, in many ways, shot ourselves in the foot. Yes, I can make money broking wine, but I may never again taste some of the greatest wines from the greatest names. It’s almost enough to bring a grown man to tears, wine tears. Okay, it wasn’t just me. But you get my gist.
Wine was becoming one of the latest fashionable alternative investments. But investing in wine is not simply a case of buying expensive bottles and waiting for them to become more expensive. You need to know what you are doing.
If you know your wines and can name the five First Growths of Bordeaux and are familiar with the great unclassified investment wines such as Le Pin and Pétrus, you might stand a chance. Even then, I wouldn’t rush out and buy Bordeaux First Growths, or even lesser growths, right now. We are currently in a period of “adjustment”. That is financial shorthand for a market downturn. As an investor, I have never experienced such a prolonged adjustment in the fine wine market. My advice to clients at the moment is simple: Not yet. I’d rather leave my money in the bank than risk losing it.
The sad truth is that I can’t see many of my favourite wines falling back into the price range where I could casually buy them to drink. And yes, I hate myself for that. But there is a consolation. There are still hundreds of fantastic wines out there that you and I can afford to buy and drink. Wines of impeccable quality, sometimes scoring 100 points, that don’t require a second mortgage or a very special occasion. They can be hard to track down, and some are certainly expensive, but there are still extraordinary bargains to be found.
One of the best-value discoveries I’ve come across recently is the surprisingly brilliant Domaine Jean-Marc Burgaud Côte du Py 2023 from Beaujolais. A respected critic rated it 99 points, and at around £25 a bottle, it doesn’t need to wait for a special occasion.
Which brings me neatly to points. Wine writers love their 100-point scale. A great wine scores 100, while a poor one falls below 80. It does make you wonder how many wines actually score below 80. And if they do, why not just rate them out of 10 or 20?
After all, the bottom line for wine investment is remarkably simple; If it isn’t above 90 points, it isn’t an investment. And if you are still looking to invest, perhaps wait until next year, or the year after that.
And in the meantime, I’ll carry on doing what I perhaps should have been doing all along; buying wine to drink and enjoy.
