Agreed 100%. The only way I can do that is to buy quality wine (min £100 a bottle) and sell it to my boss who is a millionaire. He told me this morning he would buy from me if I get into wine business.
Does anyone know any genuine fine wine suppliers in UK ? I don't want to buy from Tesco's fine wine listings and sell it to him, it would be embarrassing
the fine wine merchants i know are all retailers and as such, you'd not be able to add much margin to them as you have to buy by the 6 or 12 bottle case. bricks and mortar retailers charge a bit of a premium as they'll sell you a single bottle with all the taxes paid for your convenience. have a look at "farr vintners" and "fine+rare". the reason i suggest those 2 is that they're highly reputable - there are a few rogues out there who'll take your money and you'll never see a drop or they'll go bust. this is NOT a cheap game.
they have relationships directly with the vinyards built up over many years and so can buy at "trade" price. unless you have that relationship, you'll be scraping margins here and there. even my local offy (albeit a very, very fine offy) has relationships direct with the vinyards (he's taking me to taste the 2010 burgundy en primeur this autumn at the domaines he deals with). but then he doesn't just sell to punters over the counter and has some incredibly rare cases in his cellar.
the other way is to buy en primeur and wait 2 years to resell it. however you really have to know a bit, preferably a lot and do your research. i'll get my bordeaux 2008s this autumn and several have made getting on for 100% growth since i paid for them in 2009 (and will hopefully break through that barrier in the next couple of months). however, i still have to pay duty (a pittance when you get towards this end of the market), VAT, definitely not a pittance and shipping plus VAT...
as an example, a case i bought for £500 in may 2009 is now going for a minimum of £960 but that is all ex-tax. £20-odd duty, £100 VAT and £15-odd shipping per case. but then i could sell that, retail ie inc all taxes, for about £100 a bottle or £1100 for the case. but i can't as i'm not a licensed retailer.
there's a lot of trade ex-duty and VAT, ie you never actually see the wine, you're just using it as an investment vehicle. you buy it speculatively en primeur from a merchant, say, farr vintners. when it's bottled, it is then shipped to their bonded, light-, temperature-, humidity- and vibration-controlled cave in wiltshire where it sits. when i've decided it's made enough i can get them to sell it for me for a 10% cut or they'll buy it off me for a 20% cut. where and how fine wine is stored is incredibly important and is called provenance. it is very easy to ruin a bottle of wine.
2 big caveats - i know a little bit about the fine wine industry but i'd not know where to start if thinking about importing wine; secondly, you have to know which wines to buy. i've spent several years reading about fine wine, being lucky enough to drink some of it and researching it, so i feel relatively confident that the cases i buy will make me more profit, faster than just about any other investment. but get it wrong and you'll struggle to make even your money back.
hope this helps you make the right decision (which i'd recommend is to probably not go down this path until you know exactly what you're doing!). as i said in my post above, if it was easy, i'd definitely be doing it!
