Wine - valuing whine - FT.com Is that wine in your cellar worth what you think, or what the market says? It is a question at the heart of business and finance. Nobles Crus, one of the world's biggest wine investment funds, is accused of valuing some bottles at higher prices than rivals who use a popular index. But it is not alone in this practice. The $4tn of real estate loans held by US banks, for example, is a guess. So too the gains reported by private equity firms every quarter. It is a very human habit. Time and again people say: "I'm not selling our house because all the offers have been too low. It's worth much more! Nor is this denial necessarily bad, for the simple reason that markets often get prices wrong. Those bottles of Lafite Rothschild 2009 may well be worth more than the prices at which they trade today. Who nose?