The World's Most Expensive Fortified Wines - Wine-Searcher

Scarcity and quality are obvious prerequisites when it comes to the world's most expensive wine, but what about longevity?

The greatest wines tend to be relatively long-lived, but there comes a time in the life of every Romanée-Conti or Château Latour when rarity and collectability overtake the actual enjoyment factor of the wine in the bottle – they remain expensive because they are old vintages of classic wines, not because they necessarily taste good.

There are exceptions, of course. One of the great things about being a whiskey collector (or a collector of pretty much any spirit) is that your collection will remain a viable proposition for a lot longer than you will. A bottle of 50-year-old malt won't develop in the bottle until it is opened, but even once that happens the spirit will degenerate so imperceptibly that it could take a decade to finish and you'd hardly notice any change in flavor.

Wine doesn't really offer that kind of reliability. That bottle of 1929 Cheval Blanc might be worth a few thousand dollars, but it's probably worth more as a historical artifact than as something to enjoy with your closest friend. That's what separates people who collect wine for pleasure and those who collect for investment purposes.

This, of course, is where fortified wine comes into its own. These wines, stiffened by a dollop of spirit, offer the best of both worlds – the wine still develops with age, but its life is extended substantially. The oldest wine listed on Wine-Searcher is an RT Vintage Madeira from 1789, the year George Washington was elected as the first president of the US and the year that the French Revolution began with the storming of the Bastille. That's longevity.

Madeira is famously long-lived but, even on a less-rarefied level, Port stands the test pretty well, too. The wine in second position on the list below was vinted in 1882, and that's not even the oldest Port on the list. Similarly, Australian Tawnies (they used to call themselves Ports before we all accepted reality a few decades back) tend to last forever – or at least "forever" in wine terms.

The big omission, of course, from the list below is the other great fortified wine – Sherry. I've written about Sherry and its sad demise before, but there is no sharper illustration of its relative performance among fortified wines than the fact that there is just one Sherry with an average price for more than $1000.

Before we get to the wines, let's talk about the criteria. The list is based on wines from our database with the highest average prices. The wines must also have a minimum number of offers and be available in more than one country.

The Most Expensive Fortified Wines on Wine-Searcher:

Well, what a difference a year makes. The top five were also on the list 12 months ago, but the lower half of the list is brand new. There are a few factors that affect this – some of last year's wines simply aren't widely available enough to feature anymore, while others have emerged to replace them. The other big thing is price.

It's been a challenging year for wine generally, as our Most Expensive series has shown, and fortified wine has not escaped the price volatility. This year's list has an aggregated average price of $47,557, which is down on last year's aggregate of $48,290, but you have to look into the individual wines to get a true picture of how volatile pricing has been.

The top wine has almost doubled its average price since last year, when it stood at $5400. However, the latest vintage we have listed for it is the 1877, the year Wimbledon held its first tennis tournament, so you're really buying a piece of history. The Ne Oublie's average price has risen by more than $1000 in a year, while the JS Terrantez has dropped by more than $2000 a bottle on average, from last year's $8600.

The wines that fell out of the list this year – on the grounds of increased rarity – have also been replaced by wines with lower average prices, although these can be expected to rise as the number of available bottles dwindles.

Which just goes to show that, in the end, quality and even longevity will always be trumped by rarity.

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The World's Most Expensive Fortified Wines - Wine-Searcher
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