Out of Stocks and Into the Cellar

As you may have noticed - the stock market isn't doing so well. It closed yesterday at it's lowest point in nearly a decade, everything is sell sell sell, and at this point most brokers and small-time investors are just looking for a place to run and hide. One writer at City AM (Business with Personality) has an interesting solution to the problem . . . moving your investments out of the stock market and into the cellar.

According to recent studies wine is one of the most lucrative products on the market, often appreciating faster and better than both gold and diamonds. There's a limited supply of the really good stuff, it gets better with age and it's been around forever - so you know it's always going to sell. So I guess the question is - Is wine the new real estate? This article surely would make it seem that way.

"The reason wine is performing so beautifully is a question of supply and demand-– Economics 101 as the Canadian co founder and CEO of The Wine Investment Fund, Rodney Birrell, calls it.
There is rocketing demand for the top stuff from emerging markets such as Russia, China, India and South America and fixed supply from the investment-grade producing chateaux, almost all of which are in Bordeaux."

It's an interesting theory . . . but we must remember that wine only works as an investment if you don't drink it - which more or less means I can count myself out.