Liquid Assets

A former international banker, advises on why wine investment is an increasingly attractive option

- Raghu Bahadur

When I was young (how many years ago was that? Let me fetch my calculator) and working in Calcutta the investment advice that was bandied about comprised three top options, namely, real estate, gold and Scotch whisky. This was sound advice, as borne out by the passage of years. I unfortunately could avail of none, the first two being totally out of reach of an impecunious banker starting out on his career. The third option was a possibility, at the parsimonious rate of one bottle a month, but alas! it required a degree of self restraint that I did not then, as indeed now, possess: the investment had the regrettable tendency of soon getting drunk by the investor.

Wine investment would have been more attractive, and more impervious to temptation, but it was not an option open to us in the India of those days. Those were the days of import restrictions and scarcity of foreign currency and investment quality imported wines were just not available in sufficient quantity. And as one would expect, Indian wine, such as it then was, lacked investment quality: it would at best have matured from being medium grade vinegar to being premium grade vinegar over the course of 20 years or so.

Outside of India, though, wine investment has always been a thriving business enjoying a special niche, particularly in Europe and the US. Jancis Robinson, the wellknown wine critic, recounts how in 1983 she bought a case of Bordeaux for £295 as a first birthday present for her daughter. Some 20 years later the dozen bottles of claret that had reposed in her cellar in their original wooden box were turned into cash and the daughter, then at university, was thrilled when she received a very welcome cheque for £3,000.