Ever want to invest in wine, but didn’t have the cellar to store your investments in?
Now you can with Winible.
Levering the power of non-fungible tokens, or NFTs, Winible aims not only to make investing in wine a more trustworthy and transparent experience, but also open up the sector to more potential investors.
“The first big advantage is that you can own really easily,” says Mael, the head of the Winible team. “You just need a crypto wallet. Then you can trade the bottle P2P really easily. That’s the big thing when you want to invest in wine.”
“Most of the time when you invest in wine you’ll try to sell your wine to companies — restaurants, for example,” he says. “But thanks to NFTs, you can broaden your range of customers.”
Trade it. Redeem it. Or drink it.
Winible assigns a token to each bottle, which can be traded on Craft, ICON’s very own NFT marketplace. All of the initial batch of bottles — or cuvée — to be sold at an impending pre-sale (more on that later) will be created on the web app and imported onto Craft, making them immediately tradable.
Users can use the web platform to verify information about the bottles, visualize their NFTs and, it goes without saying, redeem their tokens.
If your interest in wine is more culinary than financial, you can burn your token and get your bottle delivered to your home, where you can drink it at your own leisure.
Proper storage guaranteed
Winible has arranged proper storage for your bottles, enhancing trust within the wine investing space.
“It’s hard to find people who will want to buy your bottle, who will trust your way of storing the bottle in the best conditions,” says Mael. “Moreover, a lot of people lack enough space or the right tools to store the wine. We store the wine with a professional wine merchant in Paris who takes care of all the storing conditions.”
The shipping cost is included in the price of the NFT as well, though you may have to pay taxes depending on where you live.
Wine and NFTs: a perfect fit
Based in Paris, the Winible team invested in wine early and has developed close relations with French vineyards.
And as wine investors, they recognize how wine fits perfectly with NFTs.
“This is a product that gains value over the years,” says Mael. “It’s also not very liquid, or easy to trade or store, which makes it really interesting.”
The wine market is very lucrative, says Winible, but logistical, visibility and accessibility problems present serious barriers to entry.
NFT technology, however, allows for easy exchange of assets and facilitating sales and purchasing opportunities, making the market more liquid and promoting greater accessibility.
Cuvée Zero
The initial cuvée on offer comes from Bordeaux wine estate Château la Conseillante.
Located near prestigious estates such as Cheval Blanc or Pétrus, Château La Conseillante is one of France’s most prestigious wines. The Nicolas family has managed the estate since 1871, making it a safe bet for long-term investors.
The Pomerol red wine — composed of Cabernet-franc (22%) and Merlot (78%) — is bold with an intense acid and tannic structure. It holds up particularly well, increasing its value year after year, making it a good fit with NFTs, especially with good storage conditions.
So, about that pre-sale…
The pre-sale consists of 200 NFTs representing a Winible “Cuvée Zero” bottle of Château La Conseillante according to its associated rarity level.
The different levels of rarity are Original (40%), Bronze (30%), Silver (17%), Gold (8%), Platinum (4%) and Diamond (1%).
The level of rarity impacts the NFT as well as the packaging of the bottle. During the presale, all bottles will be available at a unique price.
After a randomization system, each NFT will be assigned a level of rarity in a random and fair way. This means everyone in the pre-sale will have a chance to receive a Diamond bottle.
“The level of rarity doesn’t impact the wine itself but the design, the packaging and some surprises that we prepared for the highest rarities,” says Mael.
Once all Winible NFTs are sold, the reveal process will be triggered automatically.
After two weeks, if there are still NFTs in the pre-sale, the reveal process will be triggered and the remaining Winible NFTs will be offered for sale on CRAFT.
See this Medium article for more information on the pre-sale.
The presale will last two weeks starting Aug. 11 at 2 p.m. UTC. Take part via the Winible.io web app. Participants can purchase a maximum of five bottles per address.
A proof of concept
Cuvée Zero represents a sort of “proof of concept.” Winible’s long-term goal, however, is to disrupt the wine market.
“The next step might be to bring wine producers directly into the web app so that they can offer wine themselves while we manage the process of trust and technical details, but then these wine domains might be able to communicate directly,” says Mael.
“This is a very new way of addressing a lot of issues in the wine market so we think there are a lot of additional features that can be added to the project to make the experience better for the consumer, for the wine producers and also for the wine investor. So this will be a big part of our job in the coming months.”
