Fine Wine Investment:
How WSET Courses Equip You with Essential Knowledge
Fine wine investment is gaining popularity not only among lovers of the beverage, but those who are looking to explore other options to invest their money. If you put some thought into your wine collection strategy, then it will gain value over time and offer a substantial return on investment. However, if you don’t know which wines to invest in, how to preserve and protect them and how to keep track of your collection, you could end up losing more than you earn.
Challenges Faced In Fine Wine Investment
Fine wine investment isn’t as simple as collecting pricey bottles of the beverage and then sitting on them till you think it’s the right time to sell them. Unlike stocks, cash or property, wine is a perishable asset and requires great care. Also, a vintage wine’s value hardly resides in its price tag and depends instead on the climatic conditions during the year of harvest (of grapes), supply, demand, reviews and overall reception among wine lovers.
Another challenge is that inexperienced and ambitious collectors often bite more than they can chew which ends up making their fine wine investment an inconvenience rather than an asset. They have more wine than they can properly store or keep track of. Sadly, by the time they might fetch a bottle of wine from their cellar, chances are that it is beyond its drinkability and has thus lost its value. If a wine investor is not a wine lover, they may not pay attention to storing bottles and their documents carefully. Missing receipts, damaged labels and broken bottles all put a dent in your wine collection’s value.
Also, collectors without any knowledge of wine are more susceptible to being scammed. Word of mouth about a wine seller, a promise of a discount or a bottle that is rare are just some of the traps that you can fall into, if you don’t know where to buy your vintage wine and how to get it authenticated. This can not only lead to a financial loss but demoralise a wine collector as well.
How WSET Courses Can Help You Invest Better
From beginners to seasoned professionals and wine enthusiasts, Wine & Spirit Education Trust offers courses at various levels. Depending on how much you know about wine and where you want to take it, you can choose between WSET Level 1, 2 and 3. While most people pursue these courses to make a career in hospitality, retail or education, did you know that WSET Courses also come in handy if you are into fine wine investment?
WSET courses equip you with knowledge about wines- how they are made, how they should be tasted, what separates a good wine from a bad one, how to store wines etc. This knowledge gives you a key to becoming a successful fine wine investor. Here are some of the advantages of pursuing WSET courses before you foray into this field:
- Which wines you invest in: When you know how to separate good wines from bad ones, and great wines from better ones, it gives you an edge while planning your investment strategy
- Importance of cellaring: A good wine investor also knows when to cellar a wine or consume it or get rid of it and for that, you need to know how to assess a wine’s drinkability- something that you’ll learn in WSET Level 3. The course also teaches you how certain styles of wine have the potential to age while others don’t so that you can sort your wines for ageing accordingly.
- Proper storage and organisation: This is especially important if you’ll be ageing wines in your cellar. Knowing the proper storage temperature of different wines, and how to protect them from heat, vibrations, sunlight etc., will ensure that your collection is safe. Knowledge of different styles of wines, their tasting notes, wine-producing regions.
- Appraisal of collection: A wine collection needs to be appraised on a regular basis to ensure that their quality and value aren’t sliding down the graph and your WSET accreditation will help you carry out this task without having to take the services of a wine expert.
- Avoiding scams: WSET courses are recognised all around the world, creating a standard for wine knowledge. A WSET Award will thus open doors for you into various wine circles that will double up as a source of information. Knowing authentic vendors of vintage wines and how to go about the process of documentation will help you avoid fraud.
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