Professional Wine Storage: Preserve the Value of Fine Wines

Having a wine cellar at home used to be the most popular way to store your most precious bottles until it was time to drink or sell them. That’s not the case anymore. These days, more collectors and investors are using professional wine storage services, especially for their rarest or most valuable wines. 

Why is professional wine storage becoming so popular? Not only is it safer and more convenient than maintaining a home cellar, but it also has become a crucial step in the wine investment process. If you have any plans to sell your wine in the future, professional storage is a must-have that can help you earn the most profit. 

So, whether you’re looking for a safe place to stow that rare bottle of 2010 Ornellaia Masseto until it’s at its peak, or you’re a beginner wine investor wanting to preserve the value of your portfolio, professional wine storage is the best option. 

How Does Professional Wine Storage Work? 

Professional wine storage services vary from company to company. There are two types of professional storage options available to you: 

Self-Service: You store the wine yourself in a specialized wine locker. This works similarly to other types of storage lockers in that the company provides the space, but it’s ultimately your responsibility to get your wine there and keep it organized. The downside of this option is that you may not have a wine locker nearby, so you’ll have to travel far (or have your wine shipped there at a higher cost). 

It can also be difficult to keep your wine organized, especially when you can’t visit the locker frequently. Bottles could expire under these conditions before you realize they’ve reached their ideal drinking windows. This is especially true for delicate white wines that are meant to be drunk sooner than age-worthy reds like fine Bordeaux or Super Tuscans. 

Full-Service: The other option, full-service storage, is comprehensive. The company will help you ship your wine to its professional storage warehouse–you won’t have to drive the wine there yourself. The company also inspects and barcodes the bottles before packing them safely away in lightproof storage boxes. The environment is temperature and humidity-controlled, set to the ideal conditions for the wine to age slowly and gracefully. 

You can also keep track of your wine using the company’s website or proprietary app. Seeing all of your wine in one place makes it easier to track drinking windows or know exactly when to sell your wine. The best companies can also help you put your wine up for sale on its marketplace and handle all of the shipping and payment processing so you can earn a profit without lifting a finger. And, if you want to open a fine bottle of 2002 Pol Roger Brut Cuvée Sir Winston Churchill over the holidays, the company will have the wine sent directly to your door.  

Whether you’re using a self-service locker or full-service storage, collectors pay an annual, biannual, or quarterly fee to the company. For most collectors and investors, full-service professional wine storage is the way to go as it offers the greatest flexibility and level of service in exchange for the price. 

Why Professional Storage Is Better Than DIY Storage 

Full-service professional wine storage has a number of benefits over any sort of DIY storage, including self-service lockers and home cellars. Here are just a few reasons why you should consider letting the experts take charge of your collection: 

1. Safety 

Wines must be stored at just the right temperature and humidity to age properly. The best professional storage warehouses keep the temperature at an ideal 55 degrees Fahrenheit with a humidity of 68 percent. They’ll also take steps to protect your bottles from theft, using security cameras, 24/7 surveillance, and motion detectors. And, in the event of natural disaster, these warehouses are well-equipped with advanced fire detection and seismic racking designed to keep wine safe during earthquakes. 

Lighting is also an important part of keeping wine safe long-term as UV rays can damage the wine. The best professional warehouses keep bottles inside lightproof laydown boxes and use motion sensor lights that only turn on when needed.

All of these features can be quite costly to install and manage on your own at home, and some self-storage lockers don’t even offer a full range of these amenities. 

1. Organization 

The most trustworthy professional wine storage companies catalog and barcode every wine that comes through the facility and ties it to the owner’s account for precise tracking. Using apps like VinCellar, you can then look at all of your wine at a glance and even find the latest tasting notes or drinking windows for your bottles. 

To do this same thing at home, you’d need to print your own barcodes and buy a scanner. You also may not have access to all of the features a professional app provides. Or, if you choose not to barcode your wines, you risk losing a precious bottle, like 2010 Opus One, behind stacks of wine cases. The larger your collection, the more important it is to store your wine professionally for organizational purposes. 

1. Sales 

With a company like Vinfolio, once your wine is at our warehouse, you can list it for sale in an instant. Professional wine storage that’s connected to an extensive online marketplace allows you to choose the wines you want to sell, set your price, then wait for a buyer. After the buyer pays for the wine, our warehouse takes care of shipping for you. This is a service that not many in the industry offer, so doing your research when storing your wine is key.

Selling your wine from home is much more complicated. To do so legally, you have to package and ship your wine to a licensed retailer, then wait for the wine to arrive and pass inspection. It can take months to get your wine listed for sale on the website. 

1. Shipping 

Not only do professional wine storage companies take care of shipping the wine to buyers but can also handle the initial shipping logistics when you decide to move your collection over to their care. The best companies offer white-glove logistics, meaning they will guide you through the packing and pick-up process. With prioritized inbounding, your wine is shipped to the warehouse as quickly as possible. 

Shipping is one of the riskiest steps when you buy or sell wine, so having the experts handle this for you is a major benefit. 

1. Provenance 

Professional wine storage has the potential to increase the worth of your bottles significantly. Collectors find that their bottles increase in value by anywhere from 50 to 100 percent, on average, when they include proof of provenance in their sale. One way to prove provenance is to have your wine sent directly from the winery to a professional storage warehouse the moment you purchase it. It proves that the wine is authentic. Buyers also tend to be more confident that the bottles they’re buying are unspoiled when they know they’ve been professionally stored.

It’s not as easy to prove authenticity and provenance when you store your bottles at home, since your buyer can’t see your storage conditions and verify that they’re safe. By comparison, the methods storage experts use to inspect wines and keep them safe over many decades give your future buyers ease of mind, and many are willing to spend more for this privilege.

If you’re looking for the best place to keep your wine long-term, professional wine storage at a full-service warehouse will offer you the greatest number of benefits. 

How To Store Your Wine Professionally 

The first step is to find the best professional wine storage company for your needs. Look for a company that offers: 

• Full shipping services 
• Barcoding and indexing 
• Bottle inspection 
• Insurance 
• Security protocols 
• Temperature, humidity, and lighting control 
• Access to a marketplace where you can sell your wine 

The main feature to look for, however, is experience. Well-established companies that have been storing wine for years understand all of the ins and outs of the industry and have every last detail worked out to ensure your wine is safe. 

Once you’ve found an experienced storage company, you should know what to expect to pay for the service. That fee usually depends on the size of the collection–the more bottles you decide to store with most warehouses, the better storage price you’ll typically get per bottle.

You’ll also want to consider what prep work is required before you sign up for storage services. If you already have an extensive wine collection at home, the company may arrange to pick your bottles up or have them sent to the warehouse for inspection and indexing. However, if you’re just getting started with wine and don’t have any bottles yet, you can simply sign up for storage services and when you buy bottles directly from the company’s marketplace, they will automatically store them for you. There’s no prep work required. 

Letting the experts handle the technical details of wine storage frees up your time and preserves the value of your fine wine. Rather than spending an afternoon reorganizing your cellar or fixing a broken air conditioner, you could be shopping for more bottles, selling your wine for a profit, or just tasting a great wine over dinner. When it comes to investing in wine, time is valuable, and full-service warehouses give you more hours to enjoy your collection to the fullest. 

Whether you are starting your high-end wine collection or adding to an established portfolio, Vinfolio is your partner in buying,  selling, and professional wine storage. Contact us today to get access to the world’s finest wine.