Asia gets the taste for fine wine

ASIA'S TASTE FOR WINE

As Asia's love affair with fine wine grows, Joanna Faith looks at how this new phenomenon is affecting the asset class as a whole.

The success of wine as an asset class is hard to refute - the numbers speak for themselves. At the end of March, the Liv-ex Fine Wine 500 Index was up 2.61% from the previous month and had increased 23.84% year-on-year, while the Liv-ex Fine Wine 100 Index was up 34.26% year on year. With few asset classes currently delivering such attractive returns, the case for investing in wine is well versed: fine wine prices are largely uncorrelated to other asset classes; investors can see returns of up to 30% a year from some bottles; and demand is exceeding supply. A wave of demand from As...