I love wine. Even with as many headaches it may give me, I can’t help it. I’m still weeding out the “ones that cause headaches” with the wines that are “safe”. The New World wines, like California and Australia are on the “headache” list, though I love them. So, when I read a Tweet from the NY Times Dining this morning on investing in wine, it really caught my attention.

The article “Investing in Wine: Now May Be the Time” was pretty interesting. Not only did I learn that wine asset management is growing as it can now be traded as a commodity like pork bellies (or they are working towards it), but it also got me wondering…has there been a wine “bubble” or is the market just correcting itself?

Basically, wine is now like real estate. The prices of wine have decreased 20 to 40 percent on most vintages. What I found even more interesting correlates to my line of work in global marketing, emerging market populations in China, Brazil and Russia are starting to invest in wine on the open market. I know that China and Brazil produce their own wines (not sure about Russia). With the rise in incomes and lower prices, there has been an increase in investment, whether it be in real estate, wine or anything else (the capitalist way of supply and demand).

This is particularly true for my client, the California Milk Advisory Board (CMAB), now marketing specialty cheese globally. With the emerging markets the CMAB is currently targeting (China, Indonesia, Philippines and Vietnam), the rise in income brings demand of higher quality food and other products. Wine sales are also up in those countries.

Point being that we need to look outside the US, where 96 percent of the world’s population lives, in order to help pull us out of this global recession, whether they are investing in wine, pork bellies, real estate or toothbrushes. Believe it or not, the recession has not hit some countries as hard as others.

With global investments of wine increasing, this is very good news for the California cheese and wine industries!