Tempted by the credit crunch to enter the fine-wine investment arena? My advice is: don’t. Ignoring the plausible talk that fine wine outperforms the likes of gold and the stock market is hard. Ditto that it is safer than houses and the sort of risk-free investment that will pay off the mortgage. Much is made of the traditional route of buying two cases of a fine vintage wine, holding on to one until the price has doubled, before selling it – the other one is thus “free” and can fund future purchases or investments. The great one-off 2005 bordeaux vintage’s stratospheric price hikes fuel the argument. At least a dozen top ’05 bordeaux have more than doubled in price in the past two years, with first growths zipping up from around £4,000 a case to £8,000, and a few other tiny properties even trebling in price. Factor in such details as the limited production of the leading estates and the rising demand from newly rich drinkers in Russia and Hong Kong, and how can wine investors fail?

Yet the reality is that fine wine is linked to the stock market, and if banks continue to go bust, wine will go the same way. Wine investment schemes and traders continue to lure gullible wine drinkers into believing that investing in top burgundy, champagne and bordeaux names is fail-safe. It’s not. Seasoned financial advisers know full well that wine, due to the variables of climate, storage, winemakers’ peccadilloes and changing public tastes, is too darned risky. Fine wine should not represent more than 5-10 per cent of any investment portfolio.

Other potential investment pitfalls are the dud wines made by even the greatest producers. Château owners and wine merchants don’t make a big noise about them, but they happen. I bought long in the 1982 claret vintage, one of my smartest wine-drinking moves, and splashed out on several cases of one of my top wines of the vintage. Decades on, all are agreed that this ’82 claret is a dodgy performer producing as many dogs as delights in each case. Every so often, the entire vintage from one or t’other producer is flawed. There is also the tricky business of perfect storage in damp, cool cellars – and the question of provenance, too. With a weak dollar and strong euro, has it travelled hither and thither?

All this is meaningless, of course, for newcomers, if you have not been able to get hold of a decent quantity of your chosen wine and vintage in the first place. You have to be a loyal customer, often for years, before receiving a full 12-bottle case of top potential double-their-value drops like Bordeaux’s first growths. And will your merchant still be in the en primeur or futures business when your wine is bottled and shipped in two years’ time? I know of at least one long-established family wine business currently having difficulties. All that glisters is not liquid gold.

jane.macquitty@thetimes.co.uk

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