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Wine and NFTs
New York-based Acker Wines, which bills itself at America's oldest wine shop, is auctioning off bottles of Burgundy. Each bottle comes with a one-of-a-kind non-fungible token.
NEW YORK - The popping of a cork of a good, fine, wine is the beginning of an experience that can send the taste buds on a sensory journey one must experience to believe. Now toss in a one-of-a-kind non-fungible token, or NFT.
"We are wine investors and wine lovers first and foremost, and the world is becoming more and more digital," Acker Chairman John Kapon said. "So to be able to bring these worlds together — the physical and tangible, like the bottles of wine, and the digital enhancement."
Acker, on the Upper West Side, is the oldest wine shop in America but its reach is global. The shop is known for selling and auctioning the most expensive, rarest wines in the world.
But for the first time in viticulture history, Acker will auction off rare wines paired with NFTs — unique, irreplaceable digital artworks.
"We are creating… [a] unique perspective on the vineyard, the vintage. It's going to be a video composite — something that's going to be unique and stand the test of time," Kapon said. "For wine geeks, that's a big thing."
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The wine on the auction block on May 12–13 is a Domaine Du Comte Liger-Belair, which is considered one of the top producers in Burgundy and has been making wine for centuries. The bottle that will be auctioned fetches $7,000 to $8,000 — and that's without the NFT. Pairing the two adds value to the wine.
In addition to auctioning off NFTs, Acker is now one of the few wine retailers (if not the only) that accepts cryptocurrency.
Acker began accepting BitPay after clients from around the world began requesting it. That alone puts them at the forefront of the industry while also capitalizing on the global crypto trend.
Leave it to the oldest wine shop in America to invent new ways to usher in the future of sales in an industry that is thousands of years old.
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