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Comparar vinos
Holding wine costs money every year. Bonded storage in the UK runs a per-case fee that commonly includes insurance; US temperature-controlled storage is priced per case per month. Over ten years the carrying cost is a material fraction of the case's value, and it is why Corkonomics' benchmarks page shows a net-of-costs figure beside the gross index.
Bonded storage
'Under bond' means duty and sales tax are deferred while the wine sits in a licensed warehouse; the wine can be sold on without ever leaving. Trade prices are quoted in bond. UK fees have commonly been in the range of £15–25 a case a year including insurance; the warehouse's records also become the wine's provenance.
The arithmetic
A $2,000 case stored at $25 a year costs 1.25% a year to hold before insurance. Add a 10–20% buyer's premium or retail margin on the way in and a 10% commission on the way out, and a wine must rise by roughly 30–40% over a decade before the holder is even in nominal terms — before inflation, before the opportunity cost of the cash.
In the ledger
Every return on this site is a gross price change. The net-of-costs illustration uses stated assumptions (10% in, 10% out, 2% a year) so that the direction and order of magnitude are visible; the assumptions can be argued with, the principle cannot.