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Liquid Assets

from The Bristol Magazine June 2023

from The Bristol Magazine June 2023, page 78

City & Country’s Historic Conv...

Wine has always been a staple of the auction business, in the early 20th century no country house sale would be complete without a few pages of the clarets and ports from the cellar. Today wines and spirits are a multi-million pound auction business with premier sales taking place around the world. With what can appear a minefield to negotiate never has the auction adage of buying what you like been more true. The market is still recovering from the difficulties that come from Covid, the war in Ukraine and the cost of living crisis, which have made this a difficult few years for the wine trade. The buyers are also changing with the average age lowering year-on-year, today’s fine wines are more likely to be purchased by young Millennials. With the rise in online bidding collectors, dealers, restauranteurs and merchants can all fight at the same auction. Habits are changing too, and like the market, consumers are deciding to buy better quality rather than large volumes. France has always been the place to begin collecting, with the traditional regions of Bordeaux, Burgundy, Rhone and Champagne leading the way. Most collectors start with Bordeaux and then move on to the Burgundy with their amazing whites and reds from this region are increasingly strong.

We often find vintage Port, usually a gift marking a special year or occasion. The outstanding years of 1963, 1985, 1994 and 2007 often turn up at auction and offer exceptional value for money.

Spirits are of course led by whisky with great names, such as Macallan, Dalmore and Bowman attracting record-breaking prices around the world. A single bottle of The Macallan Fine and Rare 1926 whisky sold at auction for £1.2m. The strong Asian market also has a fondness for whisky, with a fifty four bottle set of Hanyu Ichiro’s Japanese whisky selling for £755,000. ■

• clevedonsalerooms.com; @chrisyeo_antiques (Instagram)