Most of what we sell, we import ourselves from family estates we have visited. That story is on Our Wineries.
The old bottles are different, and this page explains how those reach us, because when you are spending real money on a forty-year-old wine the honest question is not what it tastes like. It is whether the bottle is genuine and whether it was kept properly. Everything else is secondary.
We buy from collectors, not brokers
We do not buy rare wine on the open market and we do not bid at auction. Our older bottles come from private collectors we know personally: people who bought on release, kept the wine properly for twenty or thirty years, and are now thinning a cellar. Some of them we have known for years. Most are local.
That matters because it is the only arrangement where we can actually answer the provenance question. We can tell you whose cellar a bottle sat in and what the conditions were, because we know the person and we have usually seen the cellar.
Every bottle is inspected before we buy it
Nothing enters our inventory sight unseen. Before we agree to take a bottle we look at it in person and check:
- Fill level. On old Bordeaux this is the single best indicator of storage. High shoulder or better on a forty-year-old bottle tells you it has not been through heat cycles.
- The capsule and cork. Signs of seepage, pushed corks, or a capsule that has been disturbed.
- The label. Condition, but also whether the printing, paper and vintage details are right for the year. Counterfeit exists at the top of the market and First Growths are the most faked wines in the world.
- Colour, where the glass allows it. A wine that has gone brown early has usually been stored warm.
If something looks wrong, we do not buy it. We would rather pass on a bottle than sell you a question mark.
After we buy it
Every bottle goes into temperature-controlled storage from the day it reaches us, and stays there until it ships. It is packed for transit and sent with adult signature required.
Why the rare listings are so small
Because these are single-parcel purchases. When a collector sells us four bottles, four bottles is what exists. There is no reorder, no allocation, no second shipment. When a rare listing sells out it comes off the site.
It is also why you will not see the same old vintage twice. Each one is its own transaction.
What we will tell you before you buy
Ask and we will send photographs of the actual bottle: label, fill level, capsule, and the back label if there is one. On anything above a few hundred dollars we would rather you see it first.
We will also tell you when a wine is from a weak vintage, when it is past its peak, or when the critic score you have seen quoted somewhere belongs to a different year. Several wines on this site carry scores that other retailers have moved across vintages. We check ours against the exact bottle and say so on the page when we cannot verify a number.
If a bottle is not right
Old wine carries risk and anyone who tells you otherwise is selling. A cork can fail after forty years in a perfect cellar. If a bottle arrives damaged or is corked or oxidised when you open it, email us and we will make it right. That is covered by our Satisfaction Guarantee.
Browse our rare and limited vintages, or email us if you are looking for a specific bottle or vintage. We can often find it.
