Funny article by Richard Glover exploring the Psychology of why people retain stuff for future use, value and sentimental reasons.

We share his concern that keeping all his kids stuff makes his home another branch of Kennards Self Storage, but would happily embrace the Glover house in to our network.

One parent’s junk is a future parent’s treasure

Keep it at Kennards Richard!

The fine wine exchange by Live-ex  offers wine collectors and merchants a powerful platform to buy and sell wine to a global customer base. With members in 33 countries, it claims to represent 75% of global fine wine turnover.

The Liv-ex Fine wine index claims to be the global authority on fine wine pricing. The volume of transactions provides a credible reference point of the value of wine.

The mix of wine in the index reveals a European bias in the data, which consists mostly of Bordeaux wines with 95% of the data represented.

The latest data on the index shows a correction from a peak in May 2011. The data tracks back to 2007. Does the recent correction shown on the Liv-Ex Fine Wine 100 index represent a buying opportunity? It appears a bubble may have burst again. After 2008, there was a correction before resuming strong growth, now in late 2011 it appears to be happening again.

In addition, Liv-ex have developed a valuation tool they call ‘Cellar Watch’. This allows up to date valuation of a wine collectors cellar. The ability to track historical value and change. This could be a useful tool for people who collect wines similar to their index.

To learn more about Cellar Watch go here

Christopher Joye authored an article for Property Observer about how this growth will see Australian cities transform in to manhattan-like urban areas. In a word, he says Australian cities will undergo “Manhattanisation”.

The article observes that despite Australia’s enormous land mass and small population we are one of the most urbanized countries in the world. In 2011, 63.9% of the population live in urban areas. This is up from 42% in 1921. Further concentration is anticipated too. Read the rest of this entry »

Wine storage temperatures and humidity control are crucial for the correct cellaring of wine. Kennards Self Storage has installed state of the art cooling solutions at their Newstead, West End and Milton wine cellars. Read the rest of this entry »

The quality of the wine in the first place

There are two common misconceptions about average quality wines:

It will improve with age!!

It won’t. There is nothing in this world that will improve a bad wine. You can store a poor quality wine for a hundred years under ideal conditions and it will still be a poor quality wine. You can most certainly ruin a great wine by storing it the wrong way, but you will never improve a poor wine by storing it under ideal conditions. Read the rest of this entry »

Sunlight or exposure to UV

Light will prematurely age a bottle of wine. Clear bottles are most susceptible to this problem, but ultraviolet (UV) light will penetrate even dark coloured glass. Ultraviolet light will damage wine by causing the degradation of the otherwise stable organic compounds.

These organic compounds contribute to the aroma, flavour and structure of the wine. Without them your wine would be flat and thin. So exposure to UV light results in unfavourable and irreversible changes in your wine.

Extra care should be given to sparkling wines as they are more sensitive to light than other wines.

Incandescent or sodium vapour lights are better for a cellar than fluorescent lighting. Fluorescent lights give off significant amounts of UV light.

Summary: Store your wines in a dark place.

Humidity

The wrong humidity level is another enemy of the natural cork seal. A natural cork is compressed and forced into the bottle as a 100% natural seal. The resilient and elastic cork now wants to expand and is continuously pushing out against the glass to form a seal. The air space between the bottom of the cork and the wine is called the ullage. The ullage will increase over time as the cork is far from a perfect seal. It will let some air in while also absorbing some wine. Read the rest of this entry »

Self Storage Capitalisation rates in the USA have nearly returned to their pre-crisis levels, as revealed in Cushman & Wakefield’s Self Storage Investor Survey. Strong appetite from investors for self storage assets is driving this compression.

The C&W survey states that average Capitalisation rates firmed by 100 basis points in 2010 and a further 45 basis points in 2011, to close in on 7.25%.

Self storage Capitalisation rates in Australia and New Zealand have not experienced similar compression over the past 2 years, with cap rates still typically over 9%.

In the last 6 months, over $1 billion (USD) has been invested in self storage with stronger interest in portfolios.

To read the full Investor Survey from C&W click here

Keep it at a cool constant temperature

The magic temperature to store wines is between 12-16 degrees Centigrade. However, any temperature between 5-18C will do as long as it remains constant. The degree and the speed of the temperature change is critical. A gradual change between summer and winter of a few degrees won’t matter. The same change each day will harm your wines by ageing them more rapidly. Read the rest of this entry »

Lay it down

Which way up?

Store your table wines horizontally; on its side so the wine is in contact with the cork. This will keep the cork wet. If the cork dries out it will shrink and let air get to your wine. Air is the greatest enemy to a good wine and will turn it into vinegar. Read the rest of this entry »