Alternative Outlook

When it comes to investing in fine wines, investors appear to be concentrating on French produce alone and may be missing out on grapes grown in Austria, Italy and Portugal, according to research published by professors at the University of East Anglia’s Norwich Business School.

Dr Apostolos Kourtis, lead author of the report and a professor at the school, says: “The investment market deals mostly with French wines, but we found that diversification across the different varieties of French wine is not that effective.

“However, our r…

Surging demand for Chateau Lafite and other French trophy labels, especially from Asia, has pushed both prices at auction and wine futures to records. Not all wine dealers are happy.

The prices for some of the most expensive bottles are starting to discourage even billionaire collectors, said dealers — some of whom had warned in January of a bubble that could burst in 2011. Chinese and other buyers balked as some Bordeaux producers raised prices as much as 80 percent last month for the new vintage offered “en primeur,” when it is sti…

For most people, wine is a pleasant tipple that makes life that little bit more enjoyable at the end of the day. Some drinkers take it more seriously than others.

Some drink more of it than others. And a growing number of connoisseurs are buying wine not simply to drink but to make money.

The numbers speak for themselves. Over the past decade, fine wine has soared in value. A bottle of Chateau Lafite would have cost £130 in the summer of 2001.

Now it is worth almost £1,000. Chateau Latour, another famous name in wine, has …

At Château Latour in Pauillac, horses plough the vineyards just as they did in the 14th century, when vines were first grown on the estate. But this is a recent return to tradition at Latour, one of the five renowned “Premier Grand Crus” of Bordeaux, and it’s based on sound commercial considerations rather than sentimentality.

Prices of fine wines have surged on the back of an explosion of interest from China and other Asian countries in recent years. Unable to increase production – land is limited and there can be only one harves…