Being someone in the trade, Jamie, I’m sorry to tell you, many, many major collectors are dumping their wines like no tomorrow at all the major auction houses around the world.

You want to know how a “wine margin call” works? Let me illustrate.
The hyperbolic appreciation of wine prices in the past 5 years have given rise to many online traders/flippers. They borrowed their “investors” money to acquire a major collection, say $100K to $500K, and flipped them by selling them retail. Some, I know them personally, were caught at the peak, and needed to pay their debt but the wines were not selling! That’s exactly how it is: bought on borrowed money, and now have to pay for the losses if they can sell at all.

The sell-through rate of wines in auctions has dropped, not plateaued, from 95%+ to a pathetic 70%. Ask Zachy’s for their recent results in November, as lovely as it gets.

Prices of top “fine wines” like 1982 Lafite, has dropped from USD$3000
per bottle, to $1500 to $1600 available on auction blocks.

2005 Lafite, which was hyped so much to upward of $1200 per bottle, now is selling at $750 a bottle, in a matter of few months. And most of them are still in the process of reaching their buyers who bought on futures.

Don’t underestimate how widely this financial crisis has hit.
Many are quoted as “enthusiastic sellers” because they want
money, they don’t want to take the wines back, even if they are
top, top wines.

It is a deflating bubble.

Also, Petit Verdot wants at least five years in bottle to really bloom.

That figures. If you want it, you have to get it *before* the hype.

It’s not short of amazing that the Wine Spectactor is a publication that people in Portugal don’t read (if they know it exists).

But hype travels fast and the news that a Portuguese wine made to the top 10 of a publication (no matter which) is news all over the Portuguese media.

Now, obviously, the wine is nowhere to be found.