Wine drinking is becoming a ever more widespread fashion, and since at least a small dose of snobbism is a healthy part of the wine lover’s experience, how could the prospect of having one’s own private label fail to entice an aficionado? The Algodon Wine Estates in Mendoza, Argentina, is offering this possibility, allowing you to buy a barrel, choose the varietal(s) you wish, and decide how much time you want the wine to spend in the barrel. You get to taste the wine during the process (the program includes a complimentary two night stay at the estates at the end of the first aging period), and, though you are invited to get advice from the estate’s winemaker, in the end you make all the decisions.

The prices range from around 5,000 to 6,000 dollars, depending on the barrel you choose (French or American Oak), one barrel should yield around 290 bottles, which would mean that, by the bottle, having your own wine label would run you around 25 dollars. Not exactly cheap, but not too extravagant even for relatively amateur wine collector, and certainly manageable if you went together on it with a group of friends. 25 dollars, for example, is not really even entry level for buying Bordeaux or Burgundy, or even premium new world wines. It is easy to imagine collectors being interested in such a thing, it is fun and gives them unique, personal bottles to put in their cellar at a reasonable price.
This idea is interesting because it takes advantage of two growing trends, wine drinking and a growing interest to be more closely involved with food production. True, the Algodon Estates is not a biological producer, but it is easy to imagine this idea working even better with bio-wine, or even variations on it with other gastronomic products, like olive oil perhaps.
Check out Algodon Estates’ barrel ownership program here.