How to Buy Wine That Might Make You Rich Someday

We’ve all heard the stories. Rare bottles of Burgundy auctioned off for hundreds of thousands of dollars. A billionaire collector sells the contents of their cellar for millions. A collector discovers a case of bottles they purchased for $100 each over a decade ago is now worth $1,000 per bottle. 

“Most wine collectors and investors will tell you that the best return you can expect to get on your investment is by drinking it and sharing it with friends,” says Caleb Silver, editor in chief of Investopedia, who will be hosting a panel on Finding the Next Unicorn Wines & Whiskies at this year's Food & Wine Classic in Charleston.

While this is true, some fine wines can fetch a pretty penny on the market or at auction. But there’s more to making money in wine than sitting on a few cases for a decade.

“Building a valuable wine collection and investing in it as an asset requires not only industry expertise, but a thorough understanding of what makes a vintage valuable, how to store it properly to preserve its value, how to insure it, and how to maintain the proper documentation to prove its provenance,” says Silver.

It’s a lot to consider. But there are ways to improve chances that the bottles you buy will increase your bottom line. Here’s everything you need to know to monetize your wine collection.

Buy wine from a reputable source

In investment parlance, wine is considered an “alternative asset.” It doesn’t fall into traditional investment categories like stocks, bonds, or commodities like gold. Once bottles leave the winery, resale prices aren’t set or published by any sort of governing body; instead, the monetary value of any one bottle depends on who’s selling and who’s buying.

Buying direct from a winery and saving the receipts is the best way to purchase wine that could one day be resold at a profit. There’s no question about where the wine came from or how far it’s traveled.

The secondary market is dominated by major auction houses like Sotheby’s and Christie’s, wine-focused houses like Zachy’s. They assess collections before selling for authenticity and provenance — where the wines came from and how they were stored. It’s less advisable to buy wine outside of established channels since it’s hard, or even impossible, to prove where it came from.

Buy multiple bottles and store them properly

If you’re hoping to sell one day, it’s good to buy in bulk, or, at a minimum, in threes, according to Kerrin Laz, a Napa, California-based consultant and owner of K. Laz Wine Collection. Single bottles of any given wine can be harder to offload, since when it’s gone… it’s gone.

"I drink it and then… what happens then? I don’t know if I loved it and I don’t have a second bottle to base on how it will change,” she says.  

And once you have the wine, protect it.

“Storage is so important,” says Laz. Wine doesn’t necessarily need to be kept at a perfect 55°F  and 70% humidity, she adds, but temperatures should be cool and consistent. A wine cabinet or refrigerator that’s opened and closed even occasionally can introduce enough fluctuation to decrease a wine’s quality over the long term. When you consider the decade or more it takes to age certain wines to increase their value, small fluctuations can add up quickly. 

In other words, Laz says. “Inconsistency is what will screw a wine.” 

Understand what makes a wine valuable

“It used to be that scores — predominantly scores from wine critic Robert Parker — drew the long-term gain of a wine. It was pretty much guaranteed that a 100-point wine was a great investment,” says Marc Smoler, a former senior vice president at Hart Davis Hart Wine Co. He says the wine-scoring world has changed drastically, and a high score doesn’t necessarily guarantee a great investment, though it’s a decent signal.

“If something got an 89 I would steer clear of it, but if something has a 99 or 100, I would be more inclined to buy it and think in the long term that it might increase in value,” says Smoler.

There are certain regions of the world that are renowned for producers whose top wines consistently appreciate in price. For example, Burgundy and Bordeaux in France, home to big names like Domaine de la Romanée-Conti and Pétrus.

“Unless the world falls apart, we have a strong sense that these wines will appreciate in time,” Laz says.

Of course it’s worth remembering what happened when it felt like the world was falling apart in the early days of the pandemic, and it’s a classic case of supply and demand. Prices spiked on secondary markets as people bought up wine, not unlike the way they amassed rolls of toilet paper. 

“I knew that kind of velocity, that state, wasn’t going to continue,” Laz says. 

Now, she says, there’s some overflow as people assess their collections and realize they may not want, or be physically able, to drink the thousands of bottles they’re holding. This means prices have dropped, and collections may not be worth what they were five years ago. 

Hunting for unicorns

To an aficionado, a “unicorn wine” is as elusive, mysterious, and magical as its namesake creature. They’re often rare and hard to find, though not necessarily the most expensive. 

It’s a subjective label. “Someone’s unicorn wine might not be mine or yours, and vice-versa,” Laz says, sharing her own recent example: a 2013 Screaming Eagle Sauvignon Blanc, served by the winemaker. 

“I got goosebumps,” she said. “I’ve had newer vintages and they don’t drink the same. That 11-year-old Sauvignon Blanc was to-the-moon better than the newer vintages.”

There are other signals that can help predict if a wine might become a so-called unicorn, Laz says. The physical location and characteristics of the vineyard, conditions during the growing and harvest seasons will help determine a wine’s future promise; wines grown in cooler years tend to age longer, for example. 

It doesn’t hurt if that wine is also under-the-radar or otherwise unexpected, she explains, and scarcity only makes them more valuable. 

“Half the time these wines are so special is because there’s not a lot of them,” Laz says. “The real challenge in finding that unicorn wine is that it’s not the Pétrus of today, it’s the Pétrus of tomorrow.”