WineCap featured in the ‘Money’ supplement of Saturday’s The Telegraph. You can read Lauren Almeida’s full article here and find a summary below on how investors are turning to fine wine to protect their savings:
With share prices falling, investors are looking at how fine wines and luxury goods can protect their savings.
Historically, stocks and shares have delivered solid returns over the course of a decade during a bull market. However, with a global recession looming, markets are on a downward trajectory with global stocks down %12 year to date. With inflation at a 40-year high, savvy investors are looking to protect the value of their money through other means.
Rod Peel worked as an engineer at British Gas and is now retired in Bolivia. His portfolio of investment-grade wines are valued at over £1m. ‘I started in 2004, when I received a call from my current broker WineCap’.
‘You only make profits on the wines when you sell them. Otherwise, they sit there gaining hypothetical money. I pay around £1,000 for storage and insurance each year.’
One of the advantages of investments in wine and whisky is that there is no need to pay capital gains tax on profits as they are classified as a ‘wasting asset’ by HMRC.
‘It’s also very fun,’ Mr Peel commented. ‘It’s interesting to learn about the wines. You discover something new every day. I think it’s more engaging than investing in shares.’
Another investor is Cameron Scott, a 78-year-old accountant from Staffordshire who has been building up a portfolio of wines and is nearing retirement.
‘My wine makes up between 5pc and 10pc of my overall portfolio,’ he commented. ‘I like it because I can’t imagine that its value would ever fall to zero and it helps reduce currency risk. My best investment has been in an American wine that I bought seven or eight years ago, Screaming Eagle. It cost a few thousand a bottle, and its price doubled in just three years.’
‘But overall I view it as a long-term investment. I don’t sell many, because I’d like to pass my wine down to my beneficiaries, rather than cash in now.’
Both Mr Peel and Mr Scott highlighted that they had found it hard finding a trustworthy broker in wine. ‘It is not a fully regulated market, so there are a lot of rogues out there,’ said Mr Peel.
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