Murfatlar Romania, one of the leading players on the domestic wine market is pledging its entire wine collection to secure a 9.5 million-euro loan from OTP Bank. It needs the money for its day-to-day operations.
"The market value of the wine stocks amounts to 8.9 million euros," stated Gheorghe Cosmin Popescu, the company's manager.
Popescu explained a company, which is part of the technical expert corps of Romania, performed the appraisal of the Murfatlar wine collection this April. It said the 438,922 bottles of wine were worth 8.9 million euros. According to company data, the 1970 Sauvignon Blanc stock is the most valuable of all, and was appraised at 1.25 million RON (350,000 euros). The 1982 Chardonnay stock was evaluated at 1.19 million RON (330,000 euros).
"Most demands are for the 1975-1985 wines, while demands for very old wines dating back to 1940-1950 are very uncommon. The price for very old wines may go as high as 1,500 euros per bottle, while the average price for '75-'85 wines is 100 euros per bottle," says Radu Morar, marketing manager of Murfatlar.
Murfatlar is part of the Euro group controlled by domestic investors, among whom are Ion Dobronauteanu and George Ivanescu. The Euro group also includes the Euroavipo company, which makes the Unirea and Hanul Ars brands, the mineral water producer Bibco Biborteni and cold cuts producer Principal Construct Prahova. Murfatlar posted turnover worth 30 million dollars (25 million euros) last year, and expects it to reach about 30 million euros this year.
It is not the only winemaker that decided to have its wine collection appraised. Cotnari, another top five player, last year performed an evaluation of its own wine collection. "We have a wine collection of 40,000-60,000 bottles, which was appraised at 4 million euros last year. The oldest bottle in this collection was part of the '57 vintage," says Laurentiu Anghel, marketing manager of Cotnari. Anghel says that when the wine stocks hit minimum level, the wine in question is withdrawn from the market. The biggest four players on the wine market, Murfatlar, Vincon, Jidvei and Cotnari each have their own wine collection, yet data provided by the four companies show that only Murfatlar and Cotnari have had theirs valued.
"We've never had our wine collection appraised, as our purpose is to build a professional wine collection of about 100,000 bottles, the oldest of them dating back to 1949," says Georgel Costache, general manager of Vincon Vrancea. Vincon has collected wines from all vineyards and its general manager reckons collectible wine bottles are worth over 1,000 euros.
Jidvei has not had its wine collection evaluated, either, all the more so since company representatives say the collection is not for sale. "We are only selling wines dating back to 2000 or sooner; our 1950-1980 stock is comprised of about 60,000 bottles. Besides those, the Jidvei collection also comprises 100,000 bottles of after 1980 vintage," says Ioan Buia, Jidvei manager.
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