South African wine producers have jumped into the digital hype of Non-Fungible Tokens (NFT) to boost sales and investment in vintage wines after the devastation of Covid-19 lockdowns that severely hampered trade in the sector.
Auction house Strauss & Co yesterday said it partnered with five most respected fine wine producers to offer Africa’s first fine wine NFT on auction next week.
NFTs are a highly efficient way to package a collection of wines for trading and investment.
These unique digital contracts encompass vertical collections of Klein Constantia Vin de Constance, Kanonkop Paul Sauer, Meerlust Rubicon, Mullineux Olerasay and Vilafonté Series C, capturing past, present and future vintages.
Strauss & Co said each NFT holds between 20 and 50 vintages, with collections from 66 to 288 bottles.
The digital contract, stored on the polygon blockchain, includes all the provenance, pricing, transaction, sensorial and ageing information.
This importantly authenticates the bottles within the NFT since all the wines were selected from the estate’s library stocks, corresponding to each bottle’s seal-code.
The wine auctions is a joint venture between leading fine wine merchant WineCellar.co.za, sommelier Higgo Jacobs and leading auction house, Strauss & Co.
Roland Peens, WineCellar.co.za Director and Strauss & Co fine wine specialist, said Africa’s first NFT auction online could play an important part in generating awareness for South African fine wine internationally.
“Various fine wine NFTs have become available over the last 2 years as the NFT market has boomed. Strauss & Co Fine Wine NFTs, however, offer a unique iconic South African industry collective of verticals direct from the producers, providing unprecedented ownership of vintage wines and futures to the collector and investor,” Peens said.
Many of the wines within the NFT are extremely rare, with only a handful of the 1980 Rubicon and 1986 Vin de Constance owned by the estates and complete verticals likely do not exist the estates.
While South Africa has produced wines for more than 350 years, the historic wine estates such as Meerlust, Klein Constantia and Kanonkop have only been producing bottled wines for 40 to 50 years.
Providing collectors and investors the platform, the top SA wines have shown high appreciation on the secondary market.
A single bottle of 1821 Grand Constance sold for R967 300 (£50 000) in 2021, while 19 jeroboams across three decades of Kanonkop Paul Sauer (1986-2006) sold for R546 240 in 2020.
In 2020, South Africa was the world’s eighth-biggest wine-producing country, accounting for 4 percent of wine drunk globally.
The wine industry plays no small part in South Africa's economy, having contributed 1.1 percent to gross domestic product in 2019, providing up to 300 000 jobs, or slightly less than 2 percent of employment.
siphelele.dludla@inl.co.za
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