And last, but not least - wine market is a bubble itself. As one of my friends, very high profile sommelier, tells me every time - never pay more that 7 euros for a bottle, everything more expensive is a fluff.
I believe the domain specific language is "sparkling"...
Wow, just did a very quick Google, and some graphs look incredibly scary:
http://www.bbr.com/fine-wine/investment-wine-prices
http://blogs.reuters.com/globalinvesting/2012/07/09/investor...
http://bordeaux-traders.com/wine-investment/stock-performanc...
I admit that I know next to nothing about wine as an investment. Are the above a fair representation of the market over the last few years?
If so, I start to understand why I'd been hearing so many people talking about wine investments.
As for wine prices - they're starting to creep back up again. It's an interesting commodity - a finite amount is produced each year. It tends to improve with age, while supply decreases and demand increases.
Prices increased so much (more than the normal 10-15% per year) because newly minted Chinese people got a taste for it and bought everything they could get their hands on.
For me, the cheap Xinjiang wine is good enough.