Expert tips to enhance your fine wine investments Leave a comment

Here, Steve King, Managing Director at Bottled & Boxed, shows you how.

Wine collecting is a wonderful investment and a fulfilling hobby, and can be a really enjoyable way to invest both your time and your money. Whether you’ve been collecting fine wines for years, or are just getting into building your wine cellar, it’s always a good time to enhance your collection more, whether that is through new flavours or technology.

Explore new technology

There have been many changes to wine collecting over the years, and that includes the innovations made in technology within the industry. Some of the most notable technological developments in the fine wine field include ways to make the ageing process for the drink more precise in order to get a really enjoyable flavour. As well as this, a Juno device can be used to chill both red and white wines to a temperature that’s optimal for them to be drunk at.

Then, there are ways to keep tabs on your wine, such as Prooftag, which creates a digital ledger system to label your wine and prove each bottle’s authenticity. This can also prevent counterfeit drinks being sold, allowing you to have full peace of mind knowing everything in your collection is genuine and on record. You can even have NFTs created that contain all the necessary records for each of your wines, and create a unique certificate on the blockchain to prove its authenticity. With all these new developments, it’s worth taking the time to dive into the world of fine wine technology to see how it can add to your wine cellar.

Upgrade your storage

When you are trying to age wine, the storage that you use for the beverages is extremely important to make sure that it develops a great flavour. The first important feature of wine storage is of course low lighting, which is where the tradition of a wine cellar comes from. This is because sunlight and UV light can both damage the wine’s flavour over time. You should also be storing wines horizontally, so that the beverage can touch the cork, and this should help to prevent it from developing a musty flavour.

Professional storage facilities will ensure that you can have really precise ageing, so if you are looking for a way to really upgrade a wine collection, it might be time to invest in this. These facilities will also be temperature controlled to make sure that the wines are aged at the ideal temperature, and that it is kept constant, ensuring that your vintages will have a great flavour in years to come.

Explore new countries

You probably already know about some locations that are famous for their wine production, but you might not know about some new places around the world that are becoming more famous for their wine production. In this way, Nordic wine has become more trendy: Sweden, Denmark and Finland both have developing tourism industries surrounding their wine production, whereas you might be used to considering France and Italy as the centre of winemaking around the world.

While the industry is still small — for instance, there are only 100 winemakers in Denmark — it is growing, and these countries are definitely ones to look at as you make new investments. Explore new countries and learn about their wine industries to find new flavours that you enjoy.

Invest in organic wines

You might have noticed that organic wine has become much more of a trend recently, and many think this is due to increasing numbers of consumers and investors becoming more interested in sustainability. So, it’s worth exploring organic winemakers and tasting some of their products to find ones that appeal to you, as these beverages are set to become more valuable in the coming years.

Many vineyards are already organic, particularly in France, Spain, and Italy. So if you have specific vineyards that you purchase wines from in these countries, it’s worth asking them about organic and sustainable processes, and investing in their organic offerings if they are available. Another increasingly popular trend is biodynamic wine production, which is when vineyards use local materials for fertiliser, are organic, and are working with the local landscape to farm sustainably.

Pairings and drinking

As well as taking the time to research new wines and technologies for your collection, tasting and drinking the wine is of course crucial. When investing in wine, it’s more enjoyable to take on wines that you like the flavour of, and this can also be a useful investment tool as it can direct you to newer wines that others might not be interested in yet.

So, try new wines, take the time to go to tasting sessions, and try pairings with food. Here are some points to take note of when pairing your wines with your food:

• Keep wine and food at a similar weight. This means using lighter wines for lighter food, and richer wines for heavier food. Lightweight food like fish, poultry, and vegetarian dishes tend to go best with white wines, while rich foods like red meat casseroles need a red wine like a shiraz.
• Use acidic wines to cleanse the palette. It works well with curries, buttery sauces, and oily food to cut through the strong flavours and refresh you throughout the meal.
• Pair spicy food and sweet wine. When eating spicy food, use sweeter wine to balance the flavours and create an ideal experience.
• Pair desserts with sweet or dessert wines. When choosing a wine to go with your dessert course, you should make the most of the wide variety of sweeter and dessert wines that are available. These will pair perfectly with your puddings.

If you are looking to expand your wine collection this spring, there are many ways that you can add to it, from developing technologies to exploring the wines of new countries. So, use these tips to get you started and enjoy exploring your wine collection as both a hobby and a great investment.