New wines are being presented with great fanfare at unbelievable prices. Offered in strictly limited quantities in elegant packaging, they are intended for a hand-picked clientele prepared to pay high prices for exclusivity.
To achieve the greatest possible return for your efforts, you need a nice story and a few well-heeled dodos who think they are wine connoisseurs.
Take Wines From Another World, for example. Right from the start, the only thing that is really not from this world here are – you guessed it – the rather extraterrestrial prices. Two gentlemen, Claúdio Martins (Martins Wine Advisor MWA) and Pedro Marques Antunes (Sparrow Creative Solutions), have come up with the following: take a well-known winemaker, have them produce a wine in a fairly small quantity – we are officially talking about 500 to 1,000 bottles – clad it in an attractive designer outfit and charge €1,000.
The producer of the wine is the thoroughly respected Pedro Ribeiro from Herdade do Rocim estate in Portugal's Alentejo region. But his best red wine, Grande Rocim Grand Reserve, has so far cost less than €100 while his red Crónica 328 José Ribeiro Vieira, produced in a limited edition, was offered at €125. The wine called Jupiter bagged by Martins and Antunes came onto the market in 2021 and, with a starting price of €1,000, was more than twice as expensive as the legendary Barca Velha and thus by far the most expensive non-fortified wine in Portugal, with the Vintage Port Quinta do Noval Nacional costing even more.
A wine called Uranus followed for 2022, this one comes from Spain, produced by Dominik Huber from Terroir al Limit in Priorat. This young red wine, from the 2021 vintage, is made from Garnache and 5% Careñina, vinified in a concrete egg and has 12.5% alcohol on the label. Five hundred bottles and a few larger formats are available from this "planet", which, as you have no doubt already guessed, will be followed by a further seven colleagues orbiting the sun in the coming years. Common wine folk can quietly wait and see who will be the godfather in Bordeaux, Napa Valley or Georgia.
"These nine wines will quickly become some of the most sought-after wines of the coming decades," Mr Martins says with absolute certainty, "and it is clear that their value will i ncrease exponentially over time. These are absolute collectors' items and we want them to be in the hands of connoisseurs who appreciate their special character." That's why Uranus sometimes costs €1,700 per bouteille. Winemaker Huber even hopes that the few bottles of wine "would put Priorat and the upcoming producers of the series on the radar of new consumers. He is thinking of the "millennials who buy high-quality products at higher prices because they know that these, especially in the form of wine, give them pleasure, profit, prestige and status." All in all, a win-win-win situation. Welcome to the planet of the (wine) apes.
More intergalactic information can be found at: winesfromanotherworld.com
