Wine in crypto wallets
STRUASS & CO: FIRST NFT ONLINE AUCTION PROVES POPULAR
Bottles are ‘minted’ as non-fungible tokens and can be traded globally.
Strauss & Co envisages a future where collectors can hold an entire portfolio of wines from across the world in their crypto wallets. The last hour of the Strauss & Co Icon South African Wine NFT on-line auction saw frenetic bidding as collections of five of SA’s finest wines were sold as non-fungible tokens for the first time.
Prices exceeded estimates on several lots with Klein Constantia’s Vin de Constance vertical collection from 1986-2027 reaching R1 251 800, including commissions. Meerlust’s 50-year vertical of their famous Rubicon reached R1 081 100, while Vilafonté Series C 20032027 reached R569 000, Mullineux Olerasay 1-20 achieved R318 640 and Kanonkop Paul Sauer 2000-2025 reached R250 360.
The unique digital contracts hold between 20 and 50 vintages, with collections from 66 to 288 bottles. “This is a big step in securing South Africa’s fine wine heritage. These pristine vintage bottles are now securely on the blockchain for future trading and enjoyment,” said Strauss & Co fine wine specialist Roland Peens.
“We believe this new technology is the most powerful way of packaging and trading vintage wines, especially when provenance is so vital.”
The oldest bottles in the four-decade Vin de Constance collection, for instance, have been recorked and the bottles have never moved from their cellars.
The unique lots, which are unlikely to ever be offered again due to the low stockholdings at each producer, are a perfect fit for the NFT infrastructure. Just three bottles of the Meerlust Rubicon 1980 exist in the Meerlust cellars.
Successful bidders now hold the NFTs in a custodial or private wallet which can be viewed on the blockchain – a public peerto-peer ledger of consensus-based transactions. While each collection is an NFT, the individual bottles are also “minted” as NFTs and can be drawn or traded at any time on any NFT platform globally.
Two of the lots were paid with Bitcoin immediately after the sale, as the lots attracted a host of new buyers to Strauss & Co along with successful international bidders. “It shows that collectors value the ability to own and trade fine wines through these new ownership certificates,” said NFT project partner and Fanfire Web3 CEO Gert-Jan Van Rooyen.
“We envision a future where collectors can hold an entire portfolio of wines from across the world in their crypto wallets.”
A total R93 800 was simultaneously raised for charities critical to the wine industry. Sp(i)eel is a ground-breaking NPO that uses arts in Winelands communities to address inequality and intergenerational trauma and to assist in the development of psychosocial well-being; Pebbles Project sets to enrich the lives of disadvantaged children and families in the agricultural communities of the Western Cape; while the Cape Winemakers Guild Protege programme internships cultivate the next generation of award-winning winemakers and viticulturists through mentorship.
Strauss & Co Fine Wine Auctions is a joint venture between principal auction house, Strauss & Co, leading wine merchant WineCellar.co.za and sommelier Higgo Jacobs. Since 2019, the platform has set to develop the secondary market for fine wines in South Africa and beyond.