South African Strauss & Co. to Host NFT Auction for Fine Wines

Strauss & Co., the South African auction house, has partnered with five of the country’s wineries to offer fine wine non-fungible tokens (NFTs) to the highest bidders, the auctioneer announced Monday (April 11).

The sale, to be held April 18-25, will feature vintages from the past, present and future. The collections are from wineries including Klein Constantia Vin de Constance, Kanonkop Paul Sauer, Meerlust Rubicon, Mullineux Olerasay and Vilafonté Series C.

Each NFT holds as many as 50 vintages, with collections from 66 to 288 bottles.

“We are beyond excited to be launching Africa’s first NFT auction online, which we believe can play an important part in generating awareness for South African fine wine internationally,” said Roland Peens, a Strauss & Co. fine wine specialist. “Various fine wine NFTs have become available over the last two years as the NFT market has boomed.”

These fine wine NFTs offer what the company calls an “iconic South African industry collective” from producers, providing “unprecedented ownership of vintage wines and futures to the collector and investor.”

NFTs are a highly efficient way to package a collection of wines for trading and investment, Strauss said. Each bottle is minted as an NFT and allows for drinking or trading any time. Once auctioned, they can be traded on any platform, radically increasing its liquidity and target market across the world, Strauss added.

NFTs took off last year, and so have auction houses’ sales of them. Sotheby’s and Christie’s respectively sold $65 million and $100 million of NFTs in 2021.

Read also: About 5% of Sotheby’s, Christie’s Contemporary Art Auctions Are NFTs

These sales account for roughly 5.5% of the houses’ contemporary art sales, according to Art Market Research data.