Today’s summary of some of the wine news of the past week has a strong investment theme, but do not be discouraged and read on. There really were some great stories, which you will most certainly enjoy. Here is the JollyCellarMaster Weekly.
Flash Sales, NFTs and a global power index
The Tokenisation of Wine
Don’t you wish you had invested money in Bitcoin or another cryptocurrency that has exploded in value over the last year? Twelve months ago, Bitcoin was worth less than a sixth than what you what you would need to pay, but the real money was to be made elsewhere: BakeryToken, for example, has increased from $0,015 per coin on 1st January to $6,68 at the time of writing, which is an increase of 44,500%! Why am I telling you this? While Bitecoin and other tokens can be used for transactions, the BakeryToken is the token of Bakery Swap where you can exchange non-fungible tokens or NFTs that are used to certify digital assets to be unique and not interchangeable. They, too, are stored on a blockchain and NFTs can represent digital art like photos, videos, audio, or other types of digital files. For example, the founder of Twitter sold his first tweet as an NFT for almost $3 million recently – just one of the cases that demonstrate the hype surrounding NFTs.
What’s that got to do with wine? Well, last week I came across the news that French winemaker Château Darius is selling online images of wine bottles for more than £300 in Bakery Tokens. The idea seems to be to use NFTs to as a “means by which wine can appeal to younger drinkers and modernise winemakers’ business approach, while safeguarding the industry’s elegance, prestige, and international reputation”. Certainly, an interesting approach and I’m hoping to talk Flavien Darius Pommier, the owner of Château Darius, soon to explore the story.
Update 6th May: Today, I spoke to Flavien Darius and there is, of course, more to the story. You’ll hear the full interview in our podcast section soon, but it’s not just the image of the bottle. So, if you want to know the full story, stay tuned!
Flash Sales, Old & New World Regulations and The Importance Of Presentation
Talking about interviews and the podcast, I recently spoke to Addison Rex aka Agent Cru of the Wine Spies, an e-commerce company with an interesting twist. We didn’t just talk about flash sales, though. Given the differences between the Old and the New World in terms of regulations, we talked extensively about this, of course, and why some regulation isn’t necessary a bit thing when enjoyed in moderation. And then there was the question of packaging and why the presentation can define the destiny of a bottle. All this and more and if you haven’t listened to it yet, make sure you check it out here.
The Global Wine Brand Power Index
The people at wineintelligence have published the 2021 vintage of their Global Wine Brand Power Index. Apparently, it is based on data collected in an online wine drinker survey that analyses brand awareness, brand purchase, and brand connection as the elements to establish an overall score. According to the authors, the survey covered 25,000 wine consumers from 25 markets and 2021 includes for the first time Argentina, Italy, New Zealand, Russia and Singapore.
At the top of the global ranking sits Yellow Tail, which recently had been in the press when counterfeit wines bearing its label had been found in shops across the UK. Casillero del Diablo is second followed by Jacob’s Creek and the Gallo Family, so all the major brands are up there. National results follow a similar pattern with the Italian ranking dominated by big names, but it’s nice to see that St. Michael-Eppan made the top 15 nationwide.
In any case, you can decide for yourself how much importance you assign to such lists, but if you want to read the 128 pages, you will need to part with €3,000 or the equivalent in your local currency, no bitcoin accepted here.
A Price Tag from Outer Space
Again, let’s end it on a high note but stick with the investment theme of today’s round-up:
Do you remember the recent story of the case of Petrus that had spent a year on the ISS? Well, I’m fully aware that the title is slightly misleading since it didn’t make it out of the orbit (outer space actually only begins right after the Kármán line, but don’t take my word and sketchy knowledge in physics for it), but now one of the twelve will be auction and supposedly is likely to fetch more than $1 million – it usually goes on sale for a mere ten grand, so you make up your mind whether you want to go for the little astronaut or just buy 100 regular bottles…
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That’s all for this week. If you have an interesting story, connect on Twitter and if you want to stay in the loop about things happening at the JollyCellarMaster and the world of wine, make sure you sign up to our newsletter.
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