Why one bottle prices differently from twelve.
The price you read about is for twelve identical bottles of a young wine in a London warehouse. Almost nothing in a real cellar looks like that.
There is a published fine wine market, and it is a narrow one. The indices and the merchant price lists track cases of recent vintages, in bond, in standard format from perhaps a few hundred wines. That market is liquid, comparable and quotable, and it is the one every article about wine prices is actually describing.
Most of what a genuine forty-year cellar contains is the other thing: one bottle, of an old vintage, with a condition note attached. It prices by a different logic.
The four differences
Comparability. A case of 2016 first growth is fungible: one case is interchangeable with another and a price can be quoted without inspection. A 1946 bottle is not interchangeable with anything, because its condition is specific to it. Every sale is a negotiation about one object.
Who the buyer is. A case is bought by the trade as much as by a collector, because the trade can break it into twelve sales. A single old bottle has no trade buyer at a serious price: it is bought by the person who is going to own it or open it.
Where the risk sits. In a case, the buyer's risk is diversified across twelve bottles. In a single bottle it is concentrated in one. That concentration is real, it is priced, and honest sellers acknowledge it instead of arguing it away.
Scarcity premium. A bottle that is the only one available is not competing with other offers of the same thing. When the next one appears in three years, the buyer who wanted it now will not be waiting.
Where it cuts each way
It is not simply that single bottles cost more. They behave differently, and sometimes that favours the buyer.
Against the buyer: the only bottle of something specific, with a documented history, in a market where the next one is years away. There is no second quote to get.
For the buyer: a single bottle with no trade bid under it, from a wine with no index and no auction record, which is precisely the situation with the Argentine verticals. Nobody is competing, so the price is set by what the wine is worth rather than by what the market is doing.
The general rule is that scarcity raises the price when the name is famous and lowers it when the name is
not. The cellar contains a great deal of both.
What this means in practice
Three consequences for anyone buying single old bottles.
- Do not benchmark against a case price you read somewhere. The comparison is not wrong by a percentage,
it is the wrong market. Benchmark against the last comparable single bottle sold, in a comparable condition, and ask the seller to show you one.
- Condition is most of the price. On a single old bottle, the difference between
two fill levels can exceed the difference between two adjacent vintages.
- Decide before you ask. With one bottle, the interval between the quote and the decision is when it
sells to someone else. That is not a sales technique. It is what "one" means.
How we quote
We quote privately, in writing, per bottle, ex taxes, with the condition stated in the same message as the price. We do not publish prices, because a published price on a one-of-one bottle is a number without a context, and because the cellar is not a shop.
Quantities here are often one. Where there are two, we say two. Where a wine is only available as a complete run, we say that instead.
Why is a single bottle of old wine priced differently from a case?
Because it is not fungible. Its condition is specific to it, it has no trade buyer at a serious price, the buyer's risk is concentrated rather than spread over twelve bottles, and it is not competing with other offers of the same thing.
Do the published wine indices apply to old single bottles?
No. They track cases of recent vintages, in bond, in standard formats, which is a narrow and liquid market. Single old bottles trade in a different one.
Does scarcity always increase price?
No. Scarcity raises the price of famous names and lowers the price of unknown ones, because with an unknown wine there is no competing bid at all. Old Argentine bottles are the clearest example.
Why do you not publish prices?
A published price on a bottle of which there is one, whose value depends on its individual condition, is a number without a context. Quotes are given privately and in writing with the condition stated alongside.