首页
登录
职称英语
Every year Berry Bros & Rudd, Britain’s oldest wine merchant, issues a pocket
Every year Berry Bros & Rudd, Britain’s oldest wine merchant, issues a pocket
游客
2023-12-25
22
管理
问题
Every year Berry Bros & Rudd, Britain’s oldest wine merchant, issues a pocket-sized price list. Reading old copies makes amateurs of quality quaff want to time-travel. In 1909 a case of 12 bottles of Domaine de la Romanee-Conti 1891, Burgundy’s most famous Grand Cru, cost 180 shillings (about £1,000, or $1,300, in today’s money). In its historic London store, which opened in 1698, a single 18-year-old bottle of similar quality now sells for £25,000.
Fine wine is expensive to store, and its rarity and high transaction costs make it — oddly enough — an illiquid asset. Even so, its appreciation with age and perceived ability to diversify portfolios have made it popular with investors over the past two decades. The value of wine exchanged yearly between consumers,
connoisseurs
and collectors — the secondary market — has quadrupled to $4bn since 2000, says Justin Gibbs of Liv-ex, a wine-trading platform. He reckons that just 15% of those buying wine on his website are doing so to drink it. The rest see it as a store of value.
Fine wines are traded privately, at auctions or through exchanges like Liv-ex, where members bid for listed crus. The equivalent of an initial public offering comes when estates release their latest vintages. The wine world also has asset managers, which buy and sell hundreds of cases on behalf of clients in the hope of turning a profit. Britain is a big trading hub, notably because it offers the ability to store wine free of customs and vat provided it is kept in one of the few taxman-approved warehouses. Many professional buyers thus hold their stock under the same huge vaults. Updating records is sometimes all it takes to transfer ownership.
Investing in wine has long meant buying Bordeaux. But that is changing: the French region now accounts for 60% of secondary transactions, down from 95% in 2011. The new picks have star appeal. Bordeaux prices have done well in the past three years, rising by a third. But the value of fine Burgundy has more than doubled, according to the Liv-ex 1000 index.
One reason is that greater price transparency has boosted buyers’ confidence. Fine wines, which do not generate cash flows, cannot be valued using financial metrics such as price-to-earnings ratios. But exchanges and websites like Wine Searcher, which gathers merchant quotes from around the world, provide reference points. Apps that collect reviews from critics and consumers also help; so do gadgets to improve traceability (though fakes remain a problem). Some of this cash finds its way to new terroirs.
Investors are becoming more sophisticated, too. Chinese buyers, whose thirst for Bordeaux kept prices afloat through the financial crisis, fled the region after 2012, when a crackdown on corruption meant demand for luxury goods dried up. Many have since turned to Burgundy. Most wine-investment funds, which in the 2000s managed ¢350m ($396m), almost all of it invested in Bordeaux, went bust when the market tanked. Such outfits have since reformed, trying harder to diversify.
Recent currency shifts have made top crus a relative bargain. Burgundy was already cheaper than Bordeaux, and a dollar rally after 2015 has put the region on American and Asian buyers’ radars
(the Hong Kong dollar is pegged to the greenback)
. Italian, Califomian and other French regions have also become fashionable, says Philip Staveley of Amphora, a wine-portfolio manager. But the best Burgundy is produced in tiny volumes. Chateau Margaux, a Bordeaux star, puts out 11,000 cases a year; Domaine de la Romanee-Conti makes 450. That amplifies price movements.
Experts fear a bubble. "Everyone tells us it’s getting absurd," says Philippe Masset, a wine scholar. Younger vintages have become pricier than older ones — the wine equivalent of a yield-curve inversion. The Burgundy region gained 8% in November, while all others plateaued. Whether that lasts may depend on the value-for-money of the vintage released this month. But for now, investors see the glass half-full. [br] The word "Bordeaux" in Paragraph 4 refers to______.
选项
A、the name of a wine
B、the name of a place
C、the name of both a wine and a place
D、the name of a vineyard
答案
C
解析
推断题。定位第4段第1句,可知Bordeaux为红酒。而第2句中,the French region指Bordeaux,故C为正确答案。
转载请注明原文地址:https://tihaiku.com/zcyy/3305560.html
相关试题推荐
Whenahurricaneisabouttooccur,theNationalWeatherBureauissuesawarning
______theissuesofslaveryandracehasbeenfundamentalinAmerica’sdevelopm
Whenahurricaneisabouttooccur,theNationalWeatherBureauissuesawarning
Whenahurricaneisabouttooccur,theNationalWeatherBureauissuesawarning
BritainoccupiedJavaduringtheNapoleonicWars.BoththeBritishandlaterthe
Whenahurricaneisabouttooccur,theNationalWeatherBureauissuesawarning
AmericanYouthIssuesForyearsnow,we’veheardthe
AmericanYouthIssuesForyearsnow,we’veheardthe
AmericanYouthIssuesForyearsnow,we’veheardthe
CourageSomeoftheworld’soldestandbeststoriesareaboutcourage.Theya
随机试题
Ifyou()yourdemand,thenmaybeyouwillhavemorechanceofgettingwhatyouw
(1)ThismonthshopsintheUKwillbegintophaseouttraditionaltungstenb
(78)Wouldyouriskyourlifeforacountrythatconsideredyouasecond-clas
Manyteachersbelievethattheresponsibilitiesforlearningliewiththest
连接件是综合布线系统中各种连接设备的统称,下面选项不属于连接件的是()。A:配
验证混凝土简支梁计算的平截面假定的试验中,需要在同一截面上布置几个以上水平方向的
某化学教师在一次化学测验中设计了下面试题,并对学生的解题结果进行了统计和分析。
Thechangeinthatvillagewasmiraculou
《10kV-500kV输变电设备交接试验规程》中规定,充油设备在注油后应有足够的
下列关于我国政府预算绩效评价管理的表述,错误的是()。A.绩效目标是预算绩效管
最新回复
(
0
)