Scarcely a week passes without the news of some form of wine-related NFTs. Most recent of these has been the announcement by a startup called WokenWine that “Jacques Selosse will offer all of their vintages in the form of NFTs” through its soon-to-be-launched platform. The company, which had already signed up the Liger-Belair and Y. Clerget estates in Burgundy and now also has Bérèche & Fils and Pierre Peters I Champagne promises “a game changing tracking system for great wines based on NFT technology.” Buyers are assured that “from the bottling to the storage in free port [they can] keep an eye on each step by using the Wokenwine integrity scoring to be sure of the authenticity and the perfect conservation of the wine during its delivery.”
WokenWine’s roots are in Asia. CEO, Valéry Lux is a “private equity investor and asset developer in Europe and Singapore with a focus on asset management”, while Chief Operating Officer, Raphaèle Hervé Marraud de Sigalony worked in Hong Kong for Christie’s and the Vestiaire Collective, a marketplace for second-hand designer clothes.
Champagne Top Growers and Bordeaux Legends
While Champagne fans will be interested in the link between top growers and the new model of buying, Bordeaux lovers may be more focused on the launch of a ‘Bordeaux Legends’ NFT by Jane Anson of janeanson.com.
Bordeaux Legends – an account of the First Growths from their creation to the present day - was originally published in 2013 when Anson was Bordeaux correspondent for Decanter magazine. It is no longer available and anyone wanting a print copy would have to pay around $250-300 for a second-hand example.
For €500 ($526), however, they could have one of 100 updated and individually-watermarked digital versions, with a similarly updated foreword by Francis Ford Coppola. They will also get a ‘specially-created digital First Growth artwork’ by Bordeaux-based ‘renowned digital artist Ian Padgham’ as well as lifetime membership to janeanson.com, with ‘enhanced benefits for NFT Members.’
Crypto Currency… or Traditional Money…
Reacting to critics of the environmental costs of the crypto currencies associated with NFTs Anson also stresses that her NFTs can be bought with traditional money. Whether this lets it off the hook completely if and when they are resold is still open to question. But just as successful self-published books by wine writers Wink Lorch and Simon Woolf shifted the paradigm for authors who previously relied on publishers, Anson’s initiative may prompt others to follow her example.
The Bordeaux Legends NFT is available until June 30th. Anson reports that early buyers have been from California, Washington, New York, Florida, Canada, Australia, Singapore, Hong Kong, Thailand, and in Europe, UK, France, Switzerland, Spain and Netherlands.
