How to Invest in Wine ... Raymond Postgate Cocktails for
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How to Invest in Wine
By RAYMOND POSTGATE
THE editor has offered me—in theory only, 1 unfortunately—the sums of £10, £50 and £100, separately, to be spent as an investment in wine. 'Investment' is the important word; any- body can buy wine for the moment to drink with los Christmas dinner, but selecting wine which can be kept and will gci up in value as it is kept is a more skilled job. I am not certain whether the editor's intention is merely to buy bottles Which will improve, so that he will in future Years drink wine above his station at a lower price than he would pay otherwise, or whether he wishes to make an 'investment' in the more exact sense—that is, so as to be able to resell it later at a profit. There is not a very great dif- ference, because the two categories tend to coincide. Wine merchanting has not yet suffered greatly from the falsehoods and distortions that result from large-scale advertising (`the benefits of the nation-wide activities of public relations consultants' if you prefer that phrase), and to a very considerable degree what you can resell at a Profit in ten years' time will also be what is very good to drink in ten years' time. But there is some difference; and if you are investing in the mere Stock Exchange sense, then you must modify the advice I shall give you. You must buy rather more by the label than by the facts, for snobs will not have changed their nature in ten years, and it Is snobs who have money.
For whichever purpose, however, you invest, Wine is a far better choice for you than almost any other article. (I say 'article' intentionally; I am not talking about shares, on which I know nothing.) If you buy a typewriter, a motor-car Or a house, say, every year you have to write its value down, to allow for depreciation. If you have bought good wine, you write it up, because it in- creases in value. In order to preserve any value at all in a car or house you have to spend money, often quite a lot, on maintenance and repair. All You have to do with wine is to perambulate your cellar from time to time to look at the corks. Finally, if you do find you have made a mistake and the wine is not developing well, you can always. summon up your resolution and your Fiends and drink it up in one great beano. Could
you do that with a collapsing car—or even shares in one of Mr. D's companies?
The present time looks as though it may be the last opportunity we shall have for some time to apply these elementary principles. Prices are rising; it would have been better to have bought some months ago, and it will be less profitable to buy some months from now. The reason for this is the weather in the Gironde. Claret prices have for years acted as a sort of control on wine prices generally, especially red wines. The reason is that there is no other area in which so much wine is made which is good wine, and whose character is so easily ascertainable. It has been the relative abundance of authentic Bordeaux at a low price which has kept the vendors of other wines in line. Now there is no abundance. Nineteen fifty-four was a bad year; 1955 was fairly good, but the winesi were sold early (some- times actually on the vine) and overpriced; 1956 was a disaster—the winter which devastated almost all wine districts was worst of all in Bor- deaux; 1957 will not be as bad as was feared, but so far as my information goes that is all that one can say yet,
This being so, it is nevertheless still true that the best investment for the man who is going to spend no mote than £10 is claret. Ten pounds isn't much money, and it is a mistake when you haven't much to spend to scatter it in tiny little packets here and there. By the time that this is printed I don't think that there will be any claret worth laying down which is easily obtainable at less than 9s. a bottle, and you will want to have some at least a bit better than that. This means, by my arithmetic, that you cannot get more than about a dozen and a half all told for your £10. If you go outside claret—into Burgundy, for example—you will get even less. That means, that in order to have no more than four bottles each of your choice you will have to confine your- self to four clarets only. For myself, I would make them even fewer-1'd put my money on no more than two, so as to have enough to make it worth while if I found a real winner. But that's a matter of temperament. In either case, I would buy only 1952, 1953 or 1955 wines, with an inclination towards the '53s. (There are par- ticular reasons for this which it would take a long time to explain.) I should buy, of course, no wine that did not have the name of a chateau on it, but I should not expect a well-known chateau.
For the cheapest wine to lay down, that round about the 9s. mark, 1 would turn to those which come from the three less-known claret districts —Bourg, Blaye and Premieres Cotes de Bordeaux. Because those three districts are less famous, good wines from them are rather cheaper than else- where. As for the more expensive wines, the choice lies between WI:foe and St. Emilion (with Potherol). I apologise if I am telling you what you already know; the main difference is that the latter are rather fuller and rounder, 'half way to Burgundies' is the traditional phrase. I suggest one of each. In order to give a few names, I notice in wine merchants' lists around the prices I am thinking of a Chateau Figeac and a Chateau Belair from St. Emilion (1953), and from the Mdcloc a Batailley and the three Leovilles (Barton, Lascases and Poyferrd) in 1953 and a 1952 Clerc Milon.
When you spend £50 you can spread your bets a little. Still, of course, you should put most of your money on clarets and still you should restrict yourself to the same years, but unless you are very rich don't go above 16s. 6d. But you can also invest in a few whites—not many, because whites don't improve much after three years, as a very
general rule. I would cautiously lock up a little money in a few very grand hocks-1955s only— and for more pedestrian drinking some Alsatian of the same year, which I had tasted and liked. I'd keep it a very little while. Maybe after all, I wouldn't; I'd just drink it. I would also provide myself with some Rhone wines of the years 1952 and 1953 and instead of the inevitable Chateauneuf du Pape I would take an Hermitage or even better, a Cote Rtitie, I know no Spanish, Portuguese; Australian, Cape or Italian wines worth laying down (and you can't lay down Chianti flasks anyway; they're the wrong shape). Nor are any spirits or any sparkling wines worth laying down. If you are a port buyer (I am not) I am advised that the 1955s are going to be great wines and now is the time to lay them down.
You will have observed' I have said nothing about Burgundies. Frankly, I am afraid to. There has, been such poor stuff coming out with Bur- gundy labels on it recently that I suspect it is heavily blended stuff which is not real. Burgundy at all. Some of the less known or less advertised areas have suffered less from this decline in reliability—Macon as a whole area of cheap wine, for example, or Morey St. Denis among the famous districts. But on the whole I would only buy domaine-bottlings—and, there, you're already among the wines that start at 18s., and how much can one lay down at that price?
For the £100 investment? The same as £50, only twice as much.
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