UNDER THE SURFACE | Why wine investment scams keep happening

At the tail end of 2025, the Oeno Group – a wine merchant focused on the investment side of wine – went bust, leaving scores of customers out of pocket. While the saga received little by way of media attention, it's an all-too-common problem, says Sara Danese. So why does it keep happening and what should collectors be doing to avoid becoming another victim?

It’s the most common phrase you hear from someone touting a wine investment scheme. ‘And if it all goes wrong, at least you get to drink the wine!’ Yep, that one always gets a laugh.

Not so fast. In December last year, self-proclaimed wine investment firm Oeno Group went bankrupt, disappearing as abruptly as the £71million worth of wine it supposedly held in its reserves. Bonded warehouse London City Bond claims there is only £5–10m (depending on the valuation) worth of Oeno stock at its storage premises in Burton-Upon-Trent – and then you have to take into account roughly £7 million of debts and, of course, liquidators’ fees. All in all, it’s fair to say there’ll be no consolation drinking for many of Oeno’s unfortunate investors.

There did emerge, though, rumours of disputes between the three owners of the company, a little game of thrones behind the scenes. Then came the first signs of concern bubbling to the surface: monthly reports sent to clients trumpeting a 20% rise in the valuation of their wine portfolio, only for investors to discover — once they wanted to sell — that, after transaction costs and other fees, it was actually down 30%. That was 2023. The wine market had taken a downwards turn, and it still seemed plausible to advise investors to double down while prices were low. Few eyebrows were raised – even amid a torrent of negative reviews from Oeno investors on a two-year rolling thread on online consumer forum Reddit. Indeed, as recently as last summer, Oeno Group was apparently launching a ‘regulated fine wine investment fund’ according to Globe Newswire, which lauded the ‘bold initiative’ from a ‘leading player in the sector, combining deep industry knowledge with advanced data analytics’ in unquestioning fashion as a move that ‘promises to redefine the alternative investment landscape’. 

Summer 2025 marked the 10^th anniversary of Oeno Group, and articles duly appeared on sites such as Yahoo! Finance heralding the landmark of the ‘fine wine and whisky investment firm [which] specialises in sourcing, managing and curating exceptional bottles for private and institutional clients’. Just six months later, a notice from the City of London Corporation Trading Standards Service abruptly warned that: ‘Oeno consumers who have invested funds through the purchase of wine from Oeno over the past decade are advised that there is a risk that some or all of their investment may be lost.’ In short, Oeno Group had seemingly disappeared – and investors were beginning to fear their wine had too.

The trouble with wine investment – as anyone trying to move home will know all too well – is that it’s less about buying and more about selling. There is no shortage of people to advise on what makes a good wine investment, which bottle to buy, and what the next big thing is going to be. There are far fewer people who can actually sell the wine — never mind during a crisis such as the one that has afflicted the market since late 2022. And ultimately, that is the origin story of many financial debacles: the inability to sell, the mounting financial pressure, and then, eventually, the going rogue.

It’s true that financial wine scandals often resemble one another — not so much in their specific mechanics, which are as infinite as human creativity itself, but in the fact that they are all ultimately steeped in the wine itself: the bottle. Or the lack thereof. Whether the fraud involves fake portfolios, Ponzi schemes or counterfeiting, it always comes back to the same thing – scammers selling ‘investment wines’ that don’t actually exist. 

Keeping an eye on the bottle one buys isn’t as simple as it sounds. Ensuring that the account at the bonded warehouse is in one’s own name rather than the merchant’s is the first step towards taking control, but collectors need to go further. They should ask for rotation numbers and photographs of the bottles with their name attached, and ideally visit the warehouse themselves to confirm the stock is actually there. But even that is not always enough. Think of En Primeur, when wine is ‘purchased’ before it is actually bottled. Until delivery, there is often no real way of knowing whether a merchant has actually purchased the stock on your behalf. 

I do not write this to encourage paranoia around every wine purchase, but rather to highlight another grey area — one that works well for the vast majority of honest participants, yet still leaves room for those looking to take advantage. The more grey areas that exist, the greater the potential for fraud.

The Trading Standards’ notice informing investors of Oeno Group’s demise noted that ‘only a limited proportion of the wine – estimated to be approximately 20% – is held in individual customer accounts and may therefore be directly accessible to customers. The remainder of the wine is understood to be held within an account controlled by Oeno Future Limited.’ Why is this important? Because where assets are not clearly held on trust for clients, and where ownership cannot be readily traced, investors risk being treated as unsecured creditors. In such cases, recovery is often partial, delayed, or — likely — nil.

Average losses from individual wine frauds can be anything up to £100m – a significant figure, but nowhere near the scale of broader financial scams such as the $65billion Bernie Madoff Ponzi scheme. My first job in the City, in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, involved cold-calling clients of a trading platform to inform them about new rules. I had to collect their full names, company details, and proof of identity before they could continue trading complex financial products. ‘John from Dallas’ was no longer sufficient as an ID if they wanted to trade credit default swaps or oil options on that or any other platform. Unsurprisingly, many of those conversations were unpleasant. Traders had grown used to the simplicity and anonymity of these loosely regulated markets. They liked the grey areas of finance — the parts where fewer questions were asked.

Interestingly, it was also a crisis — the prolonged downturn that has gripped the fine wine market since late 2022 — that unravelled Oeno Group. Who knows, perhaps there will be more cases like this before the market turns. All of which makes now the time for collectors and investors to check where their wine actually is.

Sara Danese worked as an investment analyst at Russell Investments and AXA Investment Managers before building a wine-trading business focused on China, powered by social media. She covers fine wine with an investor’s eye, chiefly through In the Mood for Wine, a weekly publication for modern collectors.

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