One late evening, I have received a phone call on my home number asking if I wished to participate for a survey on Australian wine. Normally I would have politely told them that I am not interested. But wine?! Booze?! Alright, I surely have lots of inputs.
Looking back, I think that the survey was just a gimmick so that some sales person can follow up with the sales work. This friendly salesman called me and congratulated me in joining a lucky draw that with rewards I cannot recall right now and wished me luck. He then politely asked me if I wish to hear more about wine investment.
Part of me wanted to put down the phone. But part of me was curious about what wine investment is about. He started talking about “Blue Chip Wine” and “Cult Wine”. At first I asked, “Huh? Club wine?”. So he explained to me that “Blue Chip Wine” are the wines that entered into the best Australian wine top 150 list. “Cult Wine” are those that are produced in small quantity and favorably reviewed by reputed wine critics. “Blue Clip Wine” has a potential to rise 10% per year while “Cult Wine” has a potential to rise to 500% in a relatively short period of time.
I stopped him and asked innocently, “Okay, wait a minute. I don’t remember seeing the wine I drink getting more expensive each year.” Well, that was when he chuckled and explained to me what “Table Wine” means.
So in my little mind of limited entrepreneurship, I thought, “Oh well, is he asking me money to invest in building wineries? Isn’t it cool to own some wineries and get to visit Australia one day and invites my friends over and said: come to my vineyard and taste my wine. How cool is that?!”
This salesman then explained to me that his company brings in “Blue Chip Wine” and “Cult Wine” from Australia and stores them in Singapore under my name. Okay, I don’t get to own a winery in the end but I get to own some bottles of wine. So I ask him if I could just drink them off. I mean, hey, those are good wine and I don’t mind having them for self-consumption. He laughed.
Well, he tried to reassure me all the process but hey, as an investor, I am more interested in how his company makes money. So I bear all the shipping charge, insurance, storage fee, and the cost of the wine of course. In the end of, say 3 years, I can opt to sell off the wine and then pay a 5% commission to his company. At present, his company has a portfolio of S$20 million.
Alright. That was a lively 45 minutes of phone conversation and I was happy to have learned something. One last question I had was how much is the wine. He said for S$10,000 I can have 100 keg or crate (really can’t quite get his English or my understanding on wine is pretty low). So I asked: erm, how many bottles would that be. 120 bottles and he reassured me that once I have tasted his wine, I would not drink any “Table Wine” no more.
Now, that would be a real bad news to me.