Wine is not for investing, says Parker

Spending a lot for a top quality wine is fine if you plan to drink it, but not as a form of investment, says the world’s leading wine critic Robert Parker.

Robert Parker at a Wine Advocate press conference in London in January (Photo: DB)

Accounting for professional storage costs, slow appreciation and insurance makes investment in wine a tough and often fruitless endeavour, according to Parker.

Speaking to news agency Reuters, he said “It has to be stored properly. It has to be insured. That’s a significant tie-up of assets.

“For 37 years, I’ve thought wine was a terrible investment.”

Parker, who has had an unprecedented impact on the world of wine through his 100-point scoring system that can make or break wineries, is this year stepping down from tasting Bordeaux en primeurs and handing the reigns to fellow Wine Advocate colleague Neal Martin.

He will, however, still be tasting back-vintages of Bordeaux, and will soon be re-scoring the Bordeaux 2005 bottlings that he famously admits scoring too low first time around.

Ahead of the 2014 release later this year, Parker has been critical of Bordeaux overpricing its last three vintages, losing the confidence of merchants and wine buyers across the world.

Speaking to the drinks business last month, he said that Bordeaux has “lost a big share of the American market, the wines are disappearing from restaurants, and a lot of that is their [the Bordelais’] fault – they have not been realistic with prices on 2011s, ’12s or the ’13s.”

Parker predicts that the Bordelais will have to drop their prices by 30% in order to win back confidence in the region’s wines and compete with the growing influence of New World offerings.

“The Bordelais have been slow to realize it’s a global marketplace now”, he told Reuters.