Every now and then I succumb to the fantasy that it might be possible to make money from shrewd investments in wine. There's no doubt that it can be done, there are people who do it. But a thought came to me recently that just might work, and I thought I'd share it with you.

Just to clarify the picture, investing in wine means buying wines that increase in value with age. Very few wines fall into this category, the vast majority of wines out there in the market place are young wines, made to be drunk young. And that's the point; unless a wine is specifically made for ageing it won't improve with the passing years and its value doesn't rise. Increasingly few wine-makers are choosing this route, the best commercial sense is making wines that mature quickly and that will be sold and drunk within two years. There are wineries all over the world that make wines for bottle ageing, but the place that has made a virtue of it is Bordeaux.

So how do you make money out of investing in Bordeaux wines? The answer is to know quicker than everyone else whether a vintage will turn into a good one or not. Back in 1983 practically all the American wine writers were talking the 1982 vintage down. It was regarded almost universally as a bad vintage. Only one voice differed, Robert Parker of the Wine Advocate, and because1982 is now generally regarded as one of the century's better vintages, his reputation was instantly made. So the traditional way of investing was to go Bordeaux, taste the new vintage in the raw and then trust your palate with your investment. Buying 'en primeur' - before the wine is bottled - means that you also buy before the market fixes the price by demand. Get it right early and you can double your money in a year. But suppose you can't get to Bordeaux and suppose you can't trust your palate? Then maybe my new idea would work.

Great vintages are made by great weather. Sun when it's needed for ripening, rain when it's needed for watering, both in the right quantities and both at the right time. All you need to do is match the weather pattern for any year to previous years' patterns and you can tell if it's going to be a good vintage or not. I'll come back to this on and off throughout the coming year and let's see if we can predict the quality of 2004's vintage by October at the latest.

Wine of the Week

Sauvignon Blanc Villa Maria, 2002 Private Bin

This is a classic New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc from Marlborough. Like many producers in the Antipodes, Villa Maria are bottling their wines with a screw cap, a closure that works well for wines designed to be drunk young. It has an aromatic nose and the fresh crispness that you'd expect, but it also has an elegance and length that sets it apart from others in its class.
RRP €14.99, widely available.