South African Wine Prices Surge at Country's Biggest Auction
South African vintners raised 41 percent more money at the annual Nederburg Auction, the biggest of its kind in the country, as increased bidding reversed a two- year decline.
Held on Sept. 3 and 4 in Paarl, 55 kilometers (34 miles) north east of Cape Town, income at the Nederburg Auction jumped to 5.68 million rand ($789,513) from just over 4 million rand a year earlier, according to a statement on the auctioneer’s website today.
“The healthy increase in overall prices is a correction in the market place after prices dropped over the past two years,” said Nederburg, which is a owned by Distell Group Ltd., South Africa’s biggest wine and liquor producer.
A record 62,000 rand was paid for six bottles of Nederburg Port 1964 while the biggest buyer was Pinetown, South Africa- based Spar Group Ltd., a retailer, with purchases of 830,940 rand, according to Nederburg. The U.K.’s Tesco Plc was the third-largest buyer, spending 522,000 rand.
The auction’s gain in prices for so-called New World wines, a definition that includes wines from Australia and South America, is in line with the 33 percent increase in the Liv-ex 100 Fine Wine Index over the past year. The index shows price movements of 100 of the so-called Old World’s most sought after wines, including bottles from France’s Bordeaux, Burgundy, Champagne and the Rhone regions, which reached a record in June this year as consumers recovered from the global financial recession.
The Nederburg Auction, which started in 1975 with just 15 wines on show from five farms and raised an average price per case of 19 rand, this year hosted 161 specialty wines from 81 producers. The average price for a case of red wine was 1,515 rand while a dozen bottles of dry white wine fetched 1,100 rand on average, showing an almost 60-fold increase in South African wine prices over the past 36 years.
To contact the reporter on this story: Renee Bonorchis in Johannesburg at rbonorchis@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Frank Connelly at fconnelly@bloomberg.net Edward Evans at eevans3@bloomberg.net
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