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Who We Are

We are a small team of wine experts with over 50 years of combined industry experience and unparalleled access to market data, Estate Wine Brokers is the team that can help you organize fine wine into an alternative investment asset class that suits your lifestyle and financial goals.

What We Do

Our job is to provide clients with the best possible strategy for buying, selling, and trading investment-grade wines. We work only on a referral basis, and today we advise over $48.4 million in wine collections.

a close up of wine bottles stacked together
a close up of wine glasses hanging upside down

Why Invest In Wine

The secondary market for fine wine akin to fine art or collector cars. As wine ages with time, consumption depletes the availability of every vintage. Therefore, scarcity increases as time progresses. This is especially true of top vintages with lower-than-average yields which are famous for concentration and longevity. Wines that can age slowly over a greater period under optimal conditions, result in a fungible goods that can be priced and sold at-market, with substantial gains. The result is the appreciation of price and demand combined with a reduction in supply that is exacerbated over time. As of 2022, the year over year rate of return on the fine wine index exceeds 10-15% IRR, and in some cases over the past 5 years (as demonstrated below), IRR over the 5-year period exceeds 200-300% for specific wines.

OUR METHOD

INFORMATION

We closely follow harvest reports, we speak with winemakers and monitor trends in the auction and retail markets in order to harness supply and demand from the point of true opportunity. We are not mesmerized by the hype surrounding wine scoring, and we do not speculate on isosteric wines that have no age worthiness.

NEGOTATION

We network within Private Equity Groups, Family Offices, and other Wine Brokers to find investment-grade wine collections. We perform inspection, appraisal, provenance, and negotiation services at a fair rate to ensure optimal pricing and full disclosure for our Clients.

POST DELIVERY

We offer continued support to our Clients including logistics, insurance, cellar advisory, and sell-side assistance with auction houses and via our Private Client Network.

LIQUIDITY EVENT

We advise Clients as to when to liquidate all or part of their collections to maximize gains, and we know which outlets are performing at the highest levels. We provide a strategy that delivers maximum ROI over a sustained sale period. In some cases, we give clients alternative routes where they can realize greater gains, where we don’t make money. This is how we've built our credibility and referrals.

Additional information is detailed in our book, Investing In Fine Wine: How to Buy, Sell, and Profit from the World's Most Delicious Asset (Lioncrest Publishing, 2017). Full disclosure is that this book is a good do-it-yourself instruction guide. We plan to update this book in 2023 and each year moving forward.

INVESTING IN FINE WINE:

ONE YEAR IN

It has been 5 years since the publication of our book Investing in Fine Wine, and apropos of this milestone, we’re revisiting some of the claims we made in the book in order to objectively determine whether our market predictions were sound. In Chapter 8 of the book entitled “How to Find and Select a Wine Broker,” we identified fourteen specific wines for investment purposes and listed the lowest domestic retail price for each according to wine-searcher.com. Below is a chart that compares those values against the current retail prices of the sale wines:

WINE REGION YEAR PRICE 03/2017 PRICE 10/2022 IRR
Chateau La Mission Haut-Brion Bordeaux 2005 $450 $675 50.1%
Chateau Angelus Bordeaux 2009 $345 $425 22%
Domaine Fourrier Gevrey-Chambertin Clos St. Jacques 1er Cru Burgundy 2015 $429 $988 230%
Domaine du Comte Liger-Belair Vosne-Romanee Clos du Chateau Monopole Burgundy 2014 $300 $1,547 515.5%
Domaine Georges Noellat Grands Echezeaux Grand Cru Burgundy 2015 $250 $950 380%
Scarecrow Cabernet Sauvignon Napa 2014 $400 $886 220%
Futo Proprietary Red Oakville Napa 2012 $275 $395 44%
Domaine Jean-Louis Chave Hermitage Rhone 2010 $425 $850 200%
Henri Bonneau Chateauneuf du Pape Reserve des Celestins Rhone 2010 $500 $625 25%
Chateau Rayas Chateauneuf du Pape Reserve Rhone 2009 $525 $2,000 381%
Giacomo Conterno Barolo Riserva Monfortino Northern Italy 2008 $585 $1,275 218%
Elio Altare Barolo Cannubi Northern Italy 2012 $150 $179 20%
Vietti Barolo Riserva Villero Tuscany 2007 $345 $750 217%
Pian dell’Orino Brunello di Montalcino Riserva Bassolino di Sopra Tuscany 2010 $119 $599 504%
TOTALS $5,102 $12,144 216%
*5 Year Investor Rate of Return 2017-2022 IRR Per Year 43%
Total IRR % 216%