Grand Cru Cellar releases NFTs to shake up the wine industry in Asia

Hong Kong wine importer and distributor Grand Cru Cellar has stepped into the Non-fungible token (NFT) space to revolutionise wine in Asia.

The move, which according to the company makes it  “the first wine distributor in Asia to offer a wine NFT,” has been described by Grand Cru Cellar as a strategic move to revolutionise the wine industry in Asia with its wine NFTs being developed in a strategic partnership with Solarr, Asia’s first decentralised NFT-Fi platform.

The wine NFTs will include a collection of exclusively-designed NFTs representing 360 bottles of Château Margaux fine wine spanning 30 vintages from 1978 to 2007 in the winery’s history. This collection is ex-Château which was stored and delivered directly from the winery, remarkably preserving its quality since 1977.

Collectors are allegedly willing to pay a premium of up to 100% more for vintages stored and sold directly from winery to collectors in order to ensure authenticity.

NFT holders can exchange the NFTs for physical bottles of wines and, once redeemed, the NFTs will be destroyed to mark their redemption. Until the wine NFT has been redeemed, the physical fine wines will be stored in a temperature and humidity-controlled warehouse to maintain their quality. These wine NFTs can be freely traded on Solarr’s NFT-commerce platform or offered as gifts.

Mic Wong, the NFT project representative at Grand Cru Cellar said: “NFTs will help to increase the liquidity and price discovery of high-end fine wines. The auction market for these fine wines has always existed but if the bidding flow is low, the wine’s value will be locked up due to a lack of bids. Once liquidity improves, the wine’s true value can be realised. We are looking to cooperate with Solarr to auction a rare and unique collection of Margaux wine.”

Alex Lee, founder and CEO of Solarr explained: “Solarr’s NFT-as-a-Service (NFTaaS) takes the complication out of NFT-commerce. Our one-stop, end-to-end NFT services offer a highly efficient way for GCC’s wine collections to be auctioned off, eliminating the need for buyers to attend physical auctions.”

Lee added: “Solarr is helping Grand Cru Cellar execute the entire NFT value chain from composing the utility, designing the NFTs, facilitating the auction, offering NFT payment gateway, all the way to managing ownership transfer of the physical wine.”

According to the company, blockchain technology in the wine industry is tuseful because it can help increase trust and transparency, since wines that are traceable showcase their autheticity and provenance which, in turn, is highly sought after. Indeed, wines with provenance that are traceable all the way to when they left the winery are reportedly believed to be more valuable and an asset in general.