Despite the bold claims of those hawking various dubious wine gadgets, there are, sadly, no short cuts to unfurling the wondrous complexity of a well-aged wine. Fine wines generally need a bare minimum of a decade’s cellaring before even approaching peak drinkability – during which time, as that Bordeaux, Burgundy or Barolo lies undisturbed in its sepulchral chamber, the purchasers of said wine are left twiddling their thumbs, their money tied up in funding this unpredictable evolution. 

But what if, rather than holding them in storage, the wines could be used as collateral for financing to invest elsewhere – maybe even in expanding one’s collection? It sounds simple enough, and the approach has been harnessed in the worlds of art and vintage cars. But when it comes to fine wine, such an enterprise has, until now, been complicated by the challenge of checking a collection’s provenance and previous storage, along with issues around the control of the physical bottles. The lack of consistent data and significant price variation, meanwhile, has added further complexity to developing a pricing model. Until now…

Over the last couple of years, the name of Coterie has been making waves in the wine industry. An ambitious new entrant, it first came to prominence on acquiring the venerable merchant Lay & Wheeler in 2019, before, more recently, adding trade distributor Hallgarten & Novum Wines to its portfolio, and building a state-of the-art storage facility to accommodate such growth. Now it has branched out further…

Jera is the group’s online service for wine collectors to borrow money using their fine wine as collateral. Translating as ‘the harvest’ in Old English, Jera is aimed at those looking to unlock value from their wine collection. Today, with relatively high loan-to-value rates, the wine-lending platform is able to provide collectors with instant quotes based on more attractive terms.