It's a combination of pretension, mystery, investment, viticulture, vinification, historical appreciation, and fraud.
The world of wine collecting. The world of the 1%. Scratch that. The 1/10th of one percent.
It sounds like oenophiles work with vintners to create a buzz about a new wine, one that will have extremely limited production. How limited? No one says. That's part of the mystery that feeds the resulting billionaire FOMO bid war.
The wine is often not purchased for consumption. Indeed, many of them won't age properly until after the buyer is dead.
It's about the pretension of owning it, as well as finding a place to park one's (incredible pile of) excessive cash for investment, and it's an investment that has apparently been paying off well recently.
It's disgusting and fascinating at the same time.
