This $18,000 bottle of Australian wine sold out before it was released

In short:

International collectors have jumped at the opportunity to buy a new limited edition Penfolds wine sold at $18,000 a bottle. 

Prices of ultra-premium wine are as influenced by brand name and rarity as overall quality.

What’s next?

Max Allen predicts the amount of increase in value of new releases will be much less than if you started collecting decades ago.

Despite costing $18,000 a bottle, when Penfolds released its new commemorative Jeroboam this month it had already sold out.

With just eight bottles made, the Bin 180 Coonawarra Cabernet Shiraz 2021 3L limited editions of the vintage were snapped up predominantly by international wine collectors.

While older vintages often sell for large amounts at auctions, such a high price for a new release is a bit more unusual.

So why can one bottle of wine cost so much money?

Like anything worth collecting, the value of wine lies in the intersection of quality, scarcity, and prestige.

According to wine lecturer and journalist Max Allen, this particular commemorative vintage is a good study of what makes certain wines so expensive.

Despite being four times the size of the standard bottle retailing at $1,180, the 3L bottles are more than 15 times as expensive.

“Reputation and brand are often the things that push that price up to a point where it becomes unaffordable to all but a very tiny number of us,” he said.

“The wine is not four times as expensive as the single bottle because it’s been made in such tiny quantity.

“The demand for it will completely outstrip supply, and so therefore they’ve almost plucked a figure out of the air that happens to coincide with the numbers one, eight, and zero.

“They know there will be enough demand around the world for that brand, that particular collector’s item, to justify that kind of price.”

High quality wines are left to age over decades, and a larger bottle does have an edge in this regard.

“The bigger the bottle, the more slowly the wine will mature over many, many years,” Mr Allen said.

“Because they [Penfolds] have got a track record of being able to pull out vintages from 20, 30, 50 years ago, we know it will improve over time.”

Does more expensive always equal better?

Across his decades of wine tasting experience, Mr Allen believes price generally has a direct connection to quality — up to a point.

Past that, market factors and preferences come into play.

“Once the $100–$150 barrier has been breached then those differences in quality are so much more finely nuanced,” Mr Allen said.

“Even experts who have years and years of tasting under their belts will argue about quality differences.

“It is less about the innate quality of the wine at the really high prices, and more about supply and demand, reputation and desirability.”

And premium wine has been getting more expensive, according to Mr Allen.

“The general price of the most desirable wine is so much higher now that it was when I started out writing about wine 30 years ago,” he said.

“I think for the top end collector, you just have to be moving in a different wealth bracket.”

The most expensive wine ever sold at auction is the 1945 Domaine de la Romanée Conti from France, which sold for an eye-watering $US558,000 ($856,000) in 2018.

Elite collectors seek elusive wines

While the common link between most collectors of wine is wealth, Mr Allen says wine releases like the commemorative Bin 180 attracts a higher calibre of collectors.

He predicts there will be three main types of buyers — general enthusiasts who will buy one standard bottle to cellar and eventually drink themselves, investors who will buy a case planning to sell bottles in the future for a profit, and the elite “completionist” collectors who seek out the most expensive and elusive wines worldwide.

“If you’re one of those people who really wants it for that other reason why collectors collect — which is status and bragging rights — you’re probably going to be one of those people who’ve already got the $18,000 3L bottle,” Mr Allen said.

The first bottle of Penfolds Grange was sold at about $10 when released in 1951.

Seventy years later, in 2021, a bottle was sold at auction for more than $157,000, the most expensive Australian wine ever sold.

But those buying Penfolds today cannot expect the same return on investment.

“The amount of increase in value that you’re going to see with current release lines that are already at very high prices is much less than if you started collecting 20 or 40 years ago,” Mr Allen said.

“Picking the next big thing is like any kind of investment — it’s a game of reading the market and doing your research.”

How does an $18,000 wine taste?

Initial reviews for the 2021 Bin 180 have been very favourable.

Penfolds’ chief winemaker Peter Gago said the wine taste profile was somewhat surprising.

“If people are expecting bigness or boldness they’re going to be grossly disappointed. This is deliberately a medium bodied style, and to add to that we haven’t used any new oak whatsoever,” Mr Gago said.

“But there is something quite compelling about it. It draws you in. It’s obviously resonated with being beguilingly Coonawarra.”