What Will Happen With Wine in 2014?

The buying and selling of wine has two long traditions behind it: on the one hand, it is a rough-and-tumble game of selling as much mediocre wine and sheer plonk as possible to a customer base that looks first and only at price; on the other hand, it has for a century been an elitist business in which price is determined by supply and demand of the most hyped-up wines in the world.

These days, however, while the volume sales continue to tilt one way or the other in half-percentage points, the upscale wine market has gone through boom and bust periods right along with the economy in general.

Prior to 2008 California cult wines like Screaming Eagle Cabernet Sauvignon were selling for hundreds of dollars a bottle and the rarest of red Burgundies, like Romanee-Conti, sold for thousands, very often to people who had no intention of ever drinking them. The futures market, through which you pay for wines at a set price before they actually come into the market, seemed a good bet back then.

But the crash of 2008 put the wine ma


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