Brad Pitt may be a fan, but wine NFTs still have a way to go to interest collectors – experts recommend offering personal experiences
- Wine companies, including Brad Pitt’s Fleur de Miraval, are jumping on the NFT bandwagon, selling the blockchain tech with mixed results
- While some are selling for up to 10 times the price of a normal bottle, experts agree that NFT sales only work if an exclusive experience is offered
Fleur de Miraval Rosé Champagne is Brad Pitt’s latest wine baby. It was poured at this year’s Oscars, and in a few months, Pitt’s Champagne house plans to drop its first NFTs.
Non-fungible tokens, or NFTs, are smart contracts tied to digital (sometimes physical) goods by way of a QR code that’s all recorded on a blockchain.
Although the wine world is notoriously slow to change, a few future-oriented, buzz-seeking, big-name producers such as Penfolds, Robert Mondavi, and Dom Perignon, as well as a couple of small ones like Bordeaux Château Darius, entered the NFT market last year.
Many others are planning to join later this year. There are already NFT wine clubs, and the global Club dVin will make its debut on May 15 with an initial offering of 4,000 NFT memberships for 1.5 ETH (US$4,338) to 3 ETH.
Whether to invest in any of these offers is the big question. As the name suggests, each token, whether attached to a video, an image, or a physical bottle of wine, is unique and not interchangeable.
Recording it on a blockchain guarantees ownership and authenticity – although since anyone can “mint” an NFT, the underlying goods can be fake. You can buy or trade NFTs on marketplaces for crypto goods such as OpenSea.io.