Last updated: 20 December 2021. Fine wine is a booming investment market for adventurous investors. This page contains my shortlist of the best wine investment books available.
There aren't many books on the market about wine from an investment perspective. Retailers such as Amazon host a lot of e-books which are self published and haven't gone through the rigorous editing process of traditional publishing. I've generally limited this page to only feature 1-2 self-published titles for this reason.
Wine investing consists of purchasing wine, which is typically done by the case (12 or 16 bottles at a time). The wine is stored in the the wine cellar of an investor residence, and later sold back on the market via a wine merchant to liquidate any profits.
Each book featured on this page is beginner friendly and doesn't assume much prior knowledge. With prices ranging from £10 - £25, stocking up on a few of the best wine investment books can deliver the same value as an expensive seminar for only a fraction of the cost. They can even be read for free with Amazon's Kindle Unlimited free trial.
Click on any title below to see the latest price from Amazon, you'll be shocked at how affordable the most popular titles are. As an Amazon Associate, I earn a small commission from qualifying purchases which helps to support this site. This does not impact how I compile the list. Happy reading!
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Download all these wine investment books for free with Kindle Unlimited
You DON'T even need a Kindle device to download booksHere's a useful tip that will save you £100+ on wine investing books. Sign-up to Amazon's Kindle Unlimited free trial, which offers access to all titles for free for 30 days.
- There's no obligation to continue with a paid subscription.
- You don't even need a Kindle to enjoy - any device will do.
If you're cost-savvy, you'll already be calculating the savings you could unlock and the knowledge you could gain by downloading 5 books over the next 30 days.
My Top 3 Wine Investing Books for 2022
Click covers to see latest reviews and prices1. Wine Folly: Magnum Edition - Madeline Puckette
Financial Expert Rating:
Synopsis:
"Want to pick the perfect wine for dinner? Red, white or Rose? Dry or Fruity? Spanish or Portuguese? Become the expert with Wine Folly's Magnum Edition: The Master Guide.
'This will effortlessly teach you all you need to know to bluff your way through a wine list, taste like a pro, or pick the perfect accompaniment to a meal' Good Housekeeping
For anyone who's ever wanted to learn more about wine, here is the place.
Wine Folly introduced a whole new audience to the world of wine, making it easy for complete beginners to understand the fundamentals thanks to their straightforward advice, simple explanatory graphics and practical wine-tasting tips."
Who this book is for:
This outstandingly popular wine book is popular with wine lovers of all kinds - drinkers or investors.
This title is the highest reviewed book I've ever recommended on this website - 4.8 / 5.0 on Amazon with over 3,000 reviews counted.
Buying this essential guide to wine is a no-brainer for anyone who wants to understand wines and the wine market.
Financial Expert Rating:
Synopsis:
"Liquid Assets is a practical, easy-to-understand, up-to-the-minute guide to making money investing in wine, by one of the nation's top wine dealers."
Who this book is for:
A comprehensive guide to investing in wine.
If you're considering making a strategic purchase of a case of wine, this is an excellent place to start.
This guide focuses on fine wine. You'll find plenty of useful information in here which pertains to investing in liquid assets more generally.
Currently rated at 4.4 / 5.0 on Amazon, the audience reviews are in, and readers are loving Investing in Liquid Assets by David Sokolin.
Chapters include:
What makes a wine 'investment grade'?
How critic scores move the price of wine bottles
Guides to different wine regions; including Bordeaux, Span, Champagne, Australian wine and Port.
Financial Expert Rating:
Synopsis:
"Liquid assets don’t refer to actual fluids, but with wine, a rare bottle can be as sound an investment as a piece of art, as well as rewarding—and delicious.
Broker and expert Alex Andrawes grew up with a passion for wine. From his home, where pairing wine with a meal was a ritual, to his early entrepreneurial ventures, which led him into brokerage and trading, the history and culture of wine has always captivated him.
In Investing In Fine Wine, Andrawes guides readers through the viticultural world, Illuminating strategies in buying, selling, collecting, and storing exceptional bottles, and recounting fascinating experiences in the business, the traditions of winemaking, marketplace scams to avoid, and the truth behind scored magazine reviews.
Whether you’re a wine lover, a businessperson, or just craving a tantalizing read, Investing in Fine Wine is a captivating, thought-provoking book guaranteed to educate and please up until the last drop. Cheers!"
Who this book is for:
This is a book which is dedicated to wine from an investment perspective.
Written by wine broker Alex Andrawes, Investing in Fine Wine is the guide you need to read if you're considering investing in your own wine collection or cellar.
Alex uses this book to share his insights from the 'inside' of the wine trade, to help you build your wine collection of investment grade bottles, at the lowest cost.
He sets out the business case for investing in wine, and explains how to choose the best wine broker to help you build your portfolio.
He also explains how to achieve the maximum price for your wines when you come to sell.
The Financial Expert™ Best Wine Investment Book Challenge
I challenge you to read one wine book per month and see if it revolutionises your investing style!
The Financial Expert™ Best Wine Investment Book Challenge is a well-loved feature of this website.
Unlike buying shares or investing in property, investing in wine requires you to make specific investment decisions.
There are no 'Exchange Traded Funds for Wine', allowing you to immediately diversify across 1,000s of wines in an instant.
Instead, you have to hand-pick which cases of wine you want to add to your collection, and you may not be diversified across 20 different wines (as I would recommend for stocks and shares).
Read more: stocks & shares books
This is demanding of any wine investor. Suddenly the bar is raised because to even make a single investment, you need to have the confidence that you have chosen a wine which is both investment grade, and will perform well relative to other wines over your investment period.
This is why I created the best wine investment book challenge, to prompt you to become a wine expert as you begin your wine investment journey.
The rules of the challenge are simple:
I challenge you to read one wine investment book per month for the next year, and find your new favourite!
Your full twelve book series will act like a curriculum over the course of a year.
Your first book will be enlightening, the second perhaps entertaining, and the third shocking.
Stack your pile of books in a way that provides you with an ever-changing learning experience as you read your way through the books during the year.
It's a marathon, not a sprint. But there are no points awarded for reading irrelevant content either. Twelve books is a lot of content, so feel free to read the parts of books that appeal most to the style of wine investing you'll be doing.
Some guidance
- I found it helpful to stock up on books for the next few months, so that when a new month rolls around, my next book was my bed-side table asking to be opened!
- Pick a variety of styles. This will keep the challenge fresh and increase the diversity of opinion.
- Pick at least one book that you don't think you would enjoy, this book might be the one that surprises you the most!
- If you're time-starved, audio books are absolutely fine!
Where to begin?
My list of the 3 wine investment books above is as good as any place to start, as I have consciously included a mix of different writing styles to ensure that it caters to a wide audience.
Good luck!
The characteristics of wine investments
"Wine improves with age – the older I get, the better I like it."
You'll hear from brokers, brochures and wine merchants about the high returns that can be gained from investing in wine. To add balance, this section is designed to highlight the risks.
This message could equally live on my page of the best whisky investing books, as that asset also has a similar risk profile.
Risk characteristics of wine as an investment
1) Wine is not the most liquid investment. Stocks and shares can be bought and sold in a heartbeat, but wine can take days, or weeks to sell.
2) Transaction costs can be high. The authenticity of wine is sacred, as it underpins the valuation of each bottle.
To ensure the authenticity of wine, and to obtain a form of guarantee that purchased wine has the correct providence, many discerning wine buyers choose to buy through wine brokers.
Like any broker, wine brokers add transaction fees to cover their costs and earn a profit. As they help to root out imitation bottles and occasionally shill out costs to compensate buyers for dodgy bottles purchased; the cost of this fraud is included within the brokerage fees. This is similar to how the cost of vehicle theft is included within car insurance premiums.
This means that transactions are expensive and inefficient, leading to the final risk characteristic:
3) Wine is a long term investment. Thanks to higher transaction costs, and volatile prices, wine only makes economical sense as a long term investment
4) Wine has a high minimum investment. Because of the need to diversify, and the industry standard for wine to be purchased by the case, the minimum cost to build a cellar of investment-grade wine can be quite high compared to other forms of investment. In the region of £5,000.
Wine investments in an investment portfolio
"Wine is constant proof that God loves us and wants to see us happy."
As an alternative asset, wine investments should be kept to a relatively small proportion of a portfolio.
As a very general guide, even wine enthusiasts would invest no more than 5% of their investment portfolio.
This is the same asset allocation rule which would apply to other exotic investments, such as cryptocurrencies, land investments or commodities like gold and silver bullion.
You'll also want to ensure that your total allocation to alternatives as a group does not exceed the amount you have set for high-risk assets.
I personally would not invest more than 10% of my total portfolio to alternatives in general.
Read more:
It's easy to see how wine investing could become a hobby, a passion even.
As I explain in my investing psychology blog post series, it's important to not treat investing like a hobby.
Giving in to your desire to 'collect' and 'expand' your wine collection could easily cause your allocation to wine balloon value. As wine is a high-risk investment, this will usually lead to the total risk of your investment portfolio rising with it.
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