Frequently asked questions
Account creation
Creating your Wine Owners account is easy - complete our registration form, providing your name and a valid email address, wait for the verification email, then start adding your wines.
It is completely free to join Wine Owners. You will be able to select from different types of account in the future, based on increased functionality we offer in the future. These accounts may incur charges, but the essential Wine Owners functionality and content will always be available to everyone.
No. In the interests of security and data protection, Wine Owners does not store credit card details. Your payment is taken by Worldpay, a global leader in payments processing.
Creating a cellar
You can edit personal details, and amend cellar details that you have created yourself within preferences. Cellars that are automatically updated by Wine Owners from professional storage locations or that are managed by a wine merchant cannot be edited directly. Please contact us in this case with a request to edit a cellar name.
The free plan allows you to have 2 cellars. Premium members will be able to add multiple cellars.
Adding wines
There are three methods of adding wine to your cellar:
- Use our Add wine Wizard. (Use the add wine link from the manage menu)
- Buy wine on the Wine Owners exchange
- Contact us to send your wine list in electronic format ( Excel or MAC Numbers file) and we do the hard work. (subject to relevant subscription package)
Depending on the professional storage facility you use, Wine Owners can create an automatic update feed to you your collection, such that when you buy or sell wines from that facility, this will automatically be reflected in your Wine Owners portfolio.
Although we have over 5,000 top wine names in our database (75,000 including available vintages), you may well own wines that are not yet in our database. In this case, you can add wines yourself, checking the box to indicate to us that we don?t yet have it in our database.
That is when you choose our filter option that enables you to select by several different parameters such as vintage, region, colour, wine type, price range, score range.
Although we will not automatically collect price history on new wines added that are not in our referential database, a current value will be appended within 7 days, and it will valued as part of your portfolio from that moment.
Bulk upload is not yet available. However, we will happily upload your wine list for you. Request a csv file or an spreadsheet from your storage company and email it to our team.
Portfolio analysis
Portfolio is a consolidated, summary view of all your cellars and their key breakdowns. If you have only one cellar it comprises a breakdown of all the wines in that cellar by key parameters.
When you are in your portfolio, you click the Graph Icon in the far right column of the grid, to bring up the historical price graph of that wine. From here you can add other wines or indices to compare performance.
Storage
Option 1: Store wine you wish to sell through the Wine Owners trading exchange
Your storage is at Octavian Corsham in their underground cellars or at LCB Eton Park.
- FREE inspection report on each wine you offer for sale that is >£1,000. Inspection report is worth £10.80 inc. VAT. Inspection photos make a sale at your realistic offer price more likely.
- FAST Payment - we guarantee to pay you within 7 days of a successful inspection report.
Option 2: Keep wine where it is in your existing professional storage account
- You instruct movement to Wine Owners (Octavian or LCB Eton Park) within 2 working days of the trade
- You send us an original CSV or Excel file of your stored wines so we can cross check your offers for sale with an up to date record of your inventory.
You supply an Inspection report on all wines offered for sale >£1,000
or
If you’re unable to get an inspection report we will inspect all wines >£1,000 as soon as we receive them and will apply a £10.80 charge to cover the cost of inspection.
A Certificate of Title will be available online, encompassing the wine description, bottle size, pack size, your name, and the rotation number.
Every pack of wine has a rotation number that identifies it uniquely. In that way, every case of wine you store will have your name on the pack and your name on the Certificate of Title.
Costs include all risks insurance taken out by the warehouse keeper at replacement value whilst in the warehouse. There are insurance limits for wine in transit of £200,000 per van. Please contact us if you would like insurer details, or for enquiries about handling high value shipments.
Photography of original wooden cases is as follows:
- a photograph of the outside of the box, end-on, showing any rotation number labelling and other paperwork adhered to the case.
- a photograph of the wines lying inside the case, after the top panels of the case have been removed.
- where wines are wrapped in tissue paper, this is left on.
- a photograph of the wines backlit so as to clearly identify the fill levels
- front
- back (where there may be strip labels)
Wine passport
The Wine Passport ™ is a virtual set of documents to allow you to prove the provenance and condition of your wine. Provenance increasingly justifies the best prices for the best stock, or facilitates the quickest trade.
You can request inspection photographs from your professional storage company.
Inspection photos are mandatory with every offer > £1,000.
From within the individual wine record, click the Wine Passport ™ tab. Scroll down to the section titled Inspection Photos and click the icon in the top right corner of this box. This will bring up a pop-up window allowing you to locate the photographs on your computer and upload them to your Wine Passport ™.
From within the individual wine record, click the Wine Passport ™ tab. Scroll down to the section entitled Provenance Documentation and click the icon in the top right corner of this box. This will bring up a pop-up window allowing you to locate the documents on your computer and upload them to your Wine Passport ™.
Buying and bidding on the exchange
If there is a wine you would like to buy and it's already for sale on the fine wine exchange, you can buy that wine by clicking Buy Now.
It’s a 2-sided market, which means you can buy at the offered price, or if you might expect to pay a little less, you can bid for a wine with a correspondingly realistic figure under the offer price.
If there is a wine you would like to buy and there is not corresponding wine for sale in the fine wine exchange, you can create a New Bid. You can specify an expiry date when creating an open bid.
You will only be able to bid once your bid and buy preferences have been completed. Your preferences will include whether to request post trade inspection reports by default where there isn’t one already (highly recommended), and your default delivery address (professional warehouse or another UK address). If you are overseas and use a carrier, you will be able to specify collection as an option.
Owners of the wine you are bidding for are notified of your interest and can choose to sell it to you at the price you specify, or may offer the wine for sale at a higher price. You will be notified of all new offers listed for sale after you have placed your bid.
Once there is a matched offer of wine to your open bid then you must either accept the offer to match (unless there is a valid reason to reject it).
You will need to fund your account as soon as a transaction is confirmed. Bank transfers keep our costs down and enable us to offer low commissions.
Only if you choose to order an inspection report, and if it comes back not as described in any way, you can cancel the trade and will receive a complete refund (including the cost of the inspection report). If you do not select a post trade inspection report you will be need to pay for the cost of the purchase.
Selling on the exchange
You can offer wine for sale that’s in professional storage. A good rule of thumb is to offer at around 2.5%-3% below the current calculated market level price or a best market price - you’ll see regional listings by merchants when you offer a wine for sale, making the process of determining an effective price level at which you are likely to attract buyers very transparent.
When there is an interested bidder on the fine wine exchange for your wine, and you’re prepared to sell at the level of their bid price, simply select Match bid. Matching to the best bid will lower your offer price to the price of that bid, and a trade will execute. You will receive a trade confirmation and the bidder will receive an invoice to pay.
As a seller on the Wine Owners exchange your offer for sale is a binding contract. If you are unable to supply the wine you have sold Wine Owners will source the wine on the open market in order to fulfil your obligation to your buyer, and will invoice you for any price difference.
If the wine you traded is not as described in any way (eg repack, spoiled labels, variable levels, blown or dropped cork, or strip labels from a different market other than the UK) or is not pristine if no description is provided, the buyer may cancel the trade.
