Collecting with us

This will depend on you, your personal tastes, and what you hope to get out of collecting. Often, we recommend starting with classic regions like Bordeaux and Burgundy; we have longstanding relationships with many fantastic producers in these regions, and can offer you advice on their wines with full confidence. Many of these wines will also improve significantly with age: the aim of any collection. We’ll help you explore other regions and styles as your knowledge and interest grows, through expert articles, podcasts and keeping in touch.

Absolutely, if you are a fan of spirits. Your cellar should be a reflection of you and a broad and diverse collection is something to look forward to. Many of our customers collect premium whiskies, brandies, rums and sake.

Work out what you want to get out of collecting. Are you looking to store wines to enjoy in the future, or to invest – or a combination of both? No matter what, we can help guide you to build the best collection for your aims and budget.

That’s entirely up to you and your personal budget. Wine can be a long-term concern (10 to 20 years), so we’d recommend that you start with a budget you’re comfortable with. To be able to buy wine by the case with us, we would recommend starting with a minimum of £250 per month. You can view options for starting a cellar on our Cellar Plan here .

We have a host of free podcasts, articles and other content such as webinars, regional guides and interviews with producers, available for you to read through or listen to in your own time. We also send out regular emails recommending products for your cellar. If you’d like a more in-depth introduction to a certain region, it’s worth browsing through our upcoming events; our expert team regularly host masterclasses and dinners that can be a fantastic way to try new wines for yourself.

Our world of fine wine follows a calendar of offers that we put together every year. This focuses on regions where we have longstanding relationships with excellent producers. You can view the full calendar here . Beyond these milestones, we offer new and established wines and spirits all year round.

Buying En Primeur means you are buying a wine before it has been bottled, while it is still maturing in barrel. When you buy an En Primeur wine, it will be a few years before it arrives in your cellar. It’s a system that started in Bordeaux, and has now become important in Burgundy and the Rhône too.

Some of our offers, such as those from Italy, will still feature wines that will take time to arrive in your cellar. This is because when you order, they are still at the winery – we refer to them as “WLA” (wine lying abroad). They will arrive in our warehouses once ordered, and be stored In Bond.

The benefit of the En Primeur system is that in many cases, the release price will be the best one for a wine. While the price includes insurance, you won’t pay duty or VAT until you withdraw the wine for delivery. You can find more about the system and what you’re paying for when you buy En Primeur here .

When your wines arrive in our warehouse you will be notified by email and can decide if you would like to arrange delivery, list the wines for sale or continue to store them with us.

Each year, certain producers give us a set amount of their most sought-after wines (an allocation). We then have the task of deciding how to split these limited amounts of wine among the collectors who wish to buy them. Generally, there will be more interest in the wines than we’re able to meet, so we have to offer small amounts (also referred to as allocation), to a select few collectors. The world’s most desirable wines are usually only offered this way. These allocations can be small, particularly when demand is high, or the vintage has meant lower quantities of wine were produced.

We consider a few things: past purchases from particular producers, how widely across a producer’s range you buy, and how loyal customers are to the merchant. This means we’re guaranteeing wines will be allocated to those who will appreciate them most. Patience can be key when considering the most in-demand wines; routes to consider involve talking to us about what you’re hoping to buy, being prepared to purchase a selection of cases, and purchasing back-vintages from BBX.

We have close, long-term relationships with producers; nurturing these has been the best way for us to maintain volumes in smaller production years. We specialise in working with producers early on in their journey, building a relationship which is beneficial for all parties.

Buying In Bond means that you don’t pay duty and VAT, and that the wines you buy remain stored in our bonded warehouses, rather than being delivered to you. You’ll pay duty and VAT if, or when, you decide to withdraw the wines. These charges will be fixed based on the wine’s original price, even if its value has risen.

All the wines that are stored in our warehouse have been allocated drinking windows, derived from a maturity model that takes a number of different factors into account. Each phase of the wine’s maturity is given a term. We use four maturity terms.

It is important that you check in on your cellar on an annual basis, at the very least, to see how everything is progressing.

It’s a wise idea to give your cellar depth, by finding mature vintages of wines. You can do this by buying from Berry Bros. & Rudd directly, or by using BBX, our fine wine exchange – and a treasure trove of mature wines of all shapes and sizes. We can advise you when cases listed there are especially well-priced. We also run seasonal auctions, which can be a fantastic opportunity to find some gems.

When you start a cellar of fine wine and spirits, you’re investing in a collection that will bring pleasure for years to come.

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We are sometimes asked about collecting wine and spirits for financial gain. Helping customers collect with the sole intention of achieving financial return is not something we encourage. Instead, our primary goal is to help you collect to enjoy in the future. So, while a balanced collection of fine wines and spirits can be a relatively stable investment, past performance is no guarantee of future results and we don’t provide any promises about the potential increase in a wine’s value.

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Wine investment is not regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority and our Account Managers are not financial advisors. However, they can recommend products with key attributes which make them investment-grade.

We’ll advise you on which wines we believe are already good quality and where we believe their quality will improve further. However, we can never guarantee that a wine will increase in value. We can offer advice on when to sell or drink your wine and conduct cellar reviews at your request. That advice will be based on factors such as your motivation, the maturity of your wine, and our understanding of the market context.

The value of wine can be affected by many factors, such as when it was bought, the wider market, current performance, supply, drinking trends and much more. As a broad rule and especially within the context of the supply and demand dynamic that drives the fine wine market, you should look to hold wines for the long term (10-20 years). This is because the price will be affected by the supply, which constricts as people drink it.