All that glitters isn't gold, some of it is wine
By Leslie Gevirtz
NEW
YORK (Reuters) - Like gold, top wines are highly prized,
represent wealth and are selling near their historical highs.
Prices of the five premier
cru Bordeaux -- Chateaux Lafite Rothschild, Haut-Brion, Margaux,
Latour and Mouton-Rothschild, and the grand crus of Burgundy,
particularly Romanee-Conti, are at or above 2007 levels.
"During times of economic
stress and worry, buyers look to safe investments and gold is
seen as a defensive strategy. It's tangible, has intrinsic value
and is a good diversifier ... The same can be said for the top
growth Bordeaux and for the same reasons," said Jennifer
Simonetti-Bryan, an independent wine consultant.
"With markets such
as China coming on board with eyes only for the top growths,
it is a promising outlook for them."
Promising for the auction
houses, too.
Sotheby's
four Hong Kong wine auctions last spring were successful, according
to Robert Sleigh, the company's vice president of wine. "Obviously,
Asia continues to drive the prices in wine."
Christie's
wine auctions in London, Hong Kong, New York, Geneva and Amsterdam,
had sales of $13.9 million in the first half of the year, up
18 percent from the same period a year earlier. Asian wine buyers
represented 43 percent of the sales figure, Christie's spokeswoman
Erin McAndrew said.
Christie's
is starting its fall season early with its first auction on
Sept 18 in Hong Kong followed less than a week later by another
in New York, according to Charles Curtis, its head of wine sales.
"I'm
an optimist," he said. "I'm feeling overall very positive
about the fall season - and even 2011."
Prices
at spring auctions exceeded expectations. Seventy bottles Chateau
Lafite Rothschild, which auction house Acker Merrall & Condit
expected to fetch between $125,000 and $175,000 in Hong Kong
sold for $320,250 - including the buyer's premium. That's $4,575
a bottle.
Sotheby's has 2,000 bottles
of Lafite coming up for auction in Hong Kong in October with
a pre-sale estimate of between $1.5 million and $2.5 million.
One Singapore-based wine
broker, who managed to get a case of each of the top five growths
for roughly $77,000 during spring sales, said they were being
snapped up.
Saeed Shah, who works for
Premium Liquid Assets Pte, Ltd, described the Asian demand for
Lafite as an "obsession."
"As we get more and
more millionaires worldwide we see that these same people drink
these wines," Shah said, adding that with their limited
production the law of supply and demand takes over.
As for gold, it is nearing
its record high of $1,264.90 that it touched on June 27.
(Reporting
by Leslie Gevirtz; Editing by Patricia Reaney)