Strauss & Co fine wine NFT auction achieves R3.47 million in sales

South Africa’s first wine NFT online auction, which closed on Monday, achieved sales of R3.47 million. Organisers were Strauss & Co Fine Wine Auctions, a joint venture between principal auction house Strauss & Co, wine merchant WineCellar.co.za and sommelier Higgo Jacobs.

Prices exceeded estimates on several lots with Klein Constantia’s Vin de Constance vertical collection from 1986-2027 reaching R1 251 800 including commissions. Meerlust’s 50-year vertical of their famous Rubicon reached R1 081 100, while Vilafonté Series C 2003-2027 reached R569 000, Mullineux Olerasay 1-20 achieved R318 640, and Kanonkop Paul Sauer 2000-2025 reached R250 360. The unique digital contracts hold between 20 and 50 vintages, with collections from 66 to 288 bottles.

Successful bidders now hold the NFTs in a custodial or private wallet which can be viewed on the blockchain, a public peer-to-peer ledger of consensus-based transactions. While each collection is an NFT, the individual bottles are also ‘minted’ as NFTs and can be drawn or traded at any time on any NFT platform around the world. Two of the lots were paid with Bitcoin immediately after the sale.