Wine Advisors

Just as in the financial services industry, the different ways of being advised on the selection and maintenance of your wine portfolio can be categorized

Self Directed

The Winevestor does all aspects of the acquisition, storage and the selling of the wine portfolio. This is the most inexpensive approach, but to be effective, the Winevestor must spend a good deal of time researching the wines, preparing the wine for sale, and storing it themselves. Most Winevestors are also wine collectors, and as such this is more of a passion than a chore.

Full Wine Brokers

The other extreme is a full wine broker who will take your money (typically on a monthly or quarterly basis) and then invest in wine, that they choose, for investment. In this case, the broker has decided with the client ahead of time, what time horizon that the client would like to liquidate their assets. However it is up to the Wine Broker to determine all aspects of the investment. A good example of this is the ‘Discretionary’ service offered by Berry Brothers & Rudd (www.bbr.com). Incidentally this is exactly what this type of service is called in the financial service industry when a broker chooses your assets for you. The British are ahead of Americans in the use of wine as an investment, mainly due to the tax advantages in the UK. Many of the English tricks and tip of wine investment are useful and are available at a plethora of UK wine services and websites.

Advisors

In the middle are many wine advisors who give a range of services. These services are often offered a la carte and the Winevestor chooses what they want to outsource and what they want to keep within their control. These services include:

• Buying: If on the internet, you can buy wines using a standard shopping cart, or put in requests to find wines. Otherwise it is phone service.
• Moving: Moving a significant cellar can be problematic. You need gentle movers (not the norm) and air conditioned trucks, as well as someone with the correct licenses to allow you to move between states.
• Managing: With a cellar, you need to track what yo