The Brits may be suffering from a crisis of confidence at the moment, but one area in which we continue to lead the world is in professional wine storage. (It's a shame that this isn't considered an Olympic sport.)
The combination of a cold climate, centuries-old ingenuity in the fine wine trade and some underground recycled munitions dumps has led an extraordinary number of wine collectors around the world to decide to store their prized bottles in bonded warehouses on, or often under, British soil. The late Philippine Baroness de Rothschild used to swear that bottles of Ch Mouton Rothschild stored in the cold climates of the UK tasted better than those stored in Bordeaux.
Some American wine enthusiasts keep at least part of their collection in the UK. California wine collectors were shaken in 2005 when the operator of a Bay Area warehousing company, hoping to destroy evidence of his deception, set a warehouse on fire, effectively cooking 4.5 million bottles of fine wine.
But British warehousing professionals are under increasing threat from global competition. Since Hong Kong reduced its wine tariffs to zero nearly a decade ago, it has become Asia's fine wine hub. In the old days, the colony's connoisseurs routinely stored their wines in the UK – not least because until 2004 there was not a single professional storage facility in Hong Kong. Today, at least 44 wine warehouses are officially registered with the Hong Kong authorities.
Red wines from Bordeaux are a prime investment commodity in the wine business. Now private buyers who have stored their wine in the UK in the past are being encouraged to leave it at one of the bonded warehouses that have sprung up on the outskirts of Bordeaux. Not only do dealers such as Duclos, Joan and Millesima offer warehousing as part of the package, there are also custom-built facilities such as the Bordeaux City Bond warehouse specifically designed for international private clients.
With the exception of LCB Dinton – a renovated 15 Ministry of Defense bunker near Salisbury that has been converted into a wine cellar – the latest entrants to the field are above ground. This means much higher energy costs, but less risk of excess moisture.
Temperature is crucial to storing wine, with a constant temperature of 13°C/55°F being ideal – anything above 20°C may be harmful, especially for more delicate wines. The warmer the storage conditions, the faster the wine is likely to age. Much below 0°C and the wine may freeze and expand, disastrously pushing the cork out of the neck of the bottle. Few homes nowadays have the perfect space for wine storage.
Wine likes humidity because it keeps the cork moist, but wine buyers, especially in Asia, prefer their labels to be original, so a relative humidity of about 70 percent is ideal.
Britain's leading above-ground storage facility, LCB Vinothèque, housed in a sturdy former Victorian brewery in Burton-on-Trent, prides itself on being “the UK's only fully climate-controlled major wine warehouse”. LCB is an abbreviation for London City Bond, whose working shares are held for trade in Barking, east London.
Their biggest rival was Octavian, whose former munitions depot near Corsham, Wiltshire, was so underground that a railway was needed to transport crates of wine in and out. Not that much wine moves around here. Many of the wooden boxes are changed every few years – perhaps between clients of the same dealer in the UK, or a Singaporean might put the wine at auction in London and sell it to an American – but the box itself remains undisturbed under the grass and simply has a special character. A new identification sticker stuck to it.
For a private customer to retain ownership, it is necessary for each batch of wine to be specifically identified with the individual who owns it, as demonstrated when two UK wine merchants collapsed in the late twentieth century. This is important given that many UK wine merchants encourage customers to store wine with them (in most cases, with a third-party specialist warehouse), and who then continue to encourage them to trade wines among themselves. As LCB's Jeremy Pearson says, for them, “today's primary sales are tomorrow's brokerage sales.”
One of the few British wine merchants to operate their own bonded warehouse is Seckford, in Suffolk, so its prices are very competitive. The same is true of The Wine Society, although its modern premises on the outskirts of Stevenage, Hertfordshire, are now so full that they will only store wines bought from them.
Another merchant going the extra mile, despite stocking with Octavian, is Private Reserves, run by Laura Goudhuis, wife of wine merchant Johnny Goudhuis, who has noticed a number of former OW Loeb clients have recently moved their cellars to Private Reserves. To celebrate its 30th anniversary, Private Reserves is offering a waiver of landing and storage fees to anyone who switches before April 1 this year. From April, its storage rates will be £13.50 per year inclusive of VAT for a case of 12 bottles and £6.75 for a case of six bottles. LCB charges by the bottle.
When we at jancisrobinson.com tried to compile a guide to wine storage, we found more than 100 schemes in 13 countries, 28 of which are different offers from different UK traders and logistics companies, shared between a few facilities. Schemes vary according to how easy it is to extract and deliver the wine inexpensively. You might go crazy comparing deals. Here I have mentioned some notable storage facilities.
Many of the offers include insurance (Octavian's offer is up to £500m per capita), but when LCB looked at the insurance policies, it concluded that the only safe option was to take out the policies in the names of individual clients. They now offer reduced case rates as well as insurance policies for various aggregate valuations (eg £100 per annum covering wine worth £50,000).
UK storage plans are increasingly offering valuations through the fine wine trading platform Liv-ex, as well as online access to individual accounts and groups. Unfortunately, scammers are only half a step behind, so it pays to ask about security systems before choosing your storage space.
Some notable wine storage facilities
United kingdom
LCB Vinothèque Locke-King Vaults Octavian Sickford The Wine Society Berry Bros & Rudd
we
It is common for serious American collectors to build their own cellars.
Domaine Wine Storage, DC Western Carriers, NJ
France
Hong Kong
Australia
More at jancisrobinson.com/learn/where-to-store
Recent developments in the storage of fine wines (as reported by Octavian)
Significant increase in the number of private clients buying for investment. Many requests for detailed information and site visits. Since 2012, requests for photos of bottles (to see their condition, filling level, etc.) have increased from 500 to 7,500 per month. Package sizes varied. In 2012, more than 80 percent of the wine stored was in 12 bottles, but that proportion is now about 50 percent. Security IDs for valuable wines are more common and require more time and effort to verify – is it a case for introducing an industry standard? At least one $50 million loan was negotiated with a US bank by a private client using part of Octavian's existing wine collection as collateral.
See the purple pages of JancisRobinson.com for tasting notes and wine-searcher.com for global stockists.
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