Hi fella wine enthusiast!

Anyone have done any investment on French En Premier wine?

I am eyeing on the following Bordeaux wines:

1) Mouton Rothschild
2) Chateau Montrose
3) Cos'D Estournel
4) Chateau Leoville
5) Chateau Lynch Bages

Any comments?

Hello Winebuff,

Mouton Rothschild seems like a good choice for first growth wine. But you may want to look at Chateau Margaux or Rothschild Lafite

Cos D'Estournel and Chateau Leoville are 2 super second which have good potentials. But careful not to confuse yourself when looking at Chateau Leoville. They have Chateau Leoville Barton, and Chateau Leoville Las-Cases. Personally I'll go for Leoville Las-Cases.

Lynch Bages is up and coming, and their wine seems to be pretty sought after for a 5th growth.

Have you considered Chateau Palmer? it's a 3rd growth with quite a lot of potential.

But generally speaking, it's usually a safer bet to go with First growth wine if you are purely into investment.

There is a web site http://www.liv-ex.com that tracks 100 best French wine indices. You need to pay for subsription though.

Anyway good luck!

Hi Wine@Leisure, I just went to liv-ex.com to check out. Unfortunately you need to subscribe in order to see more... But I think I'll consider if I am going into wine investment seriously.

I think I have more or less zoom down to Mouton Rothschild and Chateau Leoville... Hear that 2005 is a good vintage year, whereas 2006 is ordinary and 2007 is not so good. Wonder if it's a good time for me to go in...

Any comments?

Hi Winebuff,

I am not sure whether it's still possible to invest in 2005 French En premier because the delivery is slated somewhere next month. Even if you could, the price could have increased many folds. For me, this will not sound like a good investment UNLESS you are buying purely to collect/invest in which any lose would not matter to you.

I understand that 2006 is an above average vintage whereas 2007 is not good for bordeaux wine as a whole. There are some fine wine investment firms that deal with such investments. You might want to consult their expertise?

Hey, this wine investment thingy sounds interesting. Can you share more about it? How do you start and what is the investment capital?

Hello blueray,

wine investment is an alternative investment to the common equity and funds investments.

According to investment firms, investing in fine wine can potentially fetch a return of between 10-18%. What is typically done is that we use a sum of money to investment en premier in some vintage years and sells it when it is released to the market after about 1.5 years.

Rule of thumb is to wine investment is to bet on First Growth French wine.

Personally I see that there are risk involved like any form of high return investments. There is a danger that the vintage you invested in may not turn out well, just like the 2007 vintage which is largely deemed as drinkers vintage. There is also a danger that when the sub-prime market recovers, people will turn their attention back to equity investments which could drive the price of fine wine down.

Having said that, the draw is that with the boom in emerging countries like the Middle East, China, India and Russia, demand for fine wines will be driven up.

Basically, the bottom line to all investment is to analyse your risk appetite before getting in.

Hope that helps.