Can wine weather an economic storm?

As equity and corporate bond markets around the world have struggled since the onset of the credit crunch last summer, with commercial property leading the charge some months earlier, commodities have held up well, with oil and gold prices hitting record highs in nominal terms. Perhaps less noted has been the rise of the fine wine market, which reached a peak in July last year but has so far not suffered the same pain as traditional assets, trading in a sideways range since then. A recent report by Wine Asset Managers (WAM) states that fine wine has produced an annual return of 15% sinc...