UK Edition
The French winemaker Château Darius is jumping on the craze for non-fungible tokens, also known as "NFTs", and selling online images of wine bottles for over £300.
On the website BakerySwap, the vineyard was selling digital bottles of its Bordeaux wine for 100 Bakery Tokens, a type of cryptocurrency and the equivalent of £335.
"My mission and motivation is to make my wine popular around the world, but also to make it accessible everywhere," said Flavien Darius Pommier, owner of Chateau Darius vineyard, adding he has also started accepting payments in Bitcoin.
However he said, the price of the cryptocurrency Bakery Tokens had experienced wild fluctuations in the past week, inflating the price of a digital bottle which was supposed to be selling for the equivalent of £100.
Online-only artworks, accompanied by NFTs, have been auctioned off for vast sums during the pandemic as investors rush to get involved in new ways to participate in the cryptocurrency boom.
Auction house Christie's sold a digital-only NFT artwork for $69m (£50m) in March.
In theory, NFTs are a new system to prove the authenticity of online assets. Although anyone can copy the image, only one person can possess the NFT, proving their version of the image is the original.
Pommier said he wanted to use the NFT to appeal to younger wine drinkers and modernise the sometimes "dusty" image of wine while maintaining its "elegance, prestige, and international reputation".
"We are now launching new NFTs according to each of our vintages and we will do so from now at every physical harvest at the vineyard (usually in September)," said Pommier, who added the vineyard had already sold four NFTs through different NFT marketplaces.
He added, the vineyard said they would "randomly" send bottles of real wine to people who bought the NFTs.
Beer brand Stella Artois also announced it was jumping on the NFT craze but at the lower end of the market.
Through the marketplace Rarible, Stella Artois fans will be able to bid on online-only GIFs or moving artworks, starting at £1. 100pc of the proceeds will be donated to UK hospitality staff via the until May 9th when that number will drop to 10pc.