Technical article

Wine: Provenance, Storage, Fakes and Duty

The receipts and storage records are part of the value.

By Neil Solomon · 3 min read

Imagine a retired couple with a cellar of a few hundred bottles. Some were bought young and some were gifts. One child lives in another country, and none of the children drinks much wine. The cellar is on their minds.

What the market has done

Wine has had a rough run. The Liv-ex Fine Wine 1000 index was up 0.7% over one year to July 2026, down 9.6% over two years and down 6.6% over five, as reported by a trade news site. Knight Frank puts the Liv-ex Fine Wine 100 at minus 2.5% in 2025, about 25% below its 2022 peak. By region, Bordeaux fell 17.5% over five years while Champagne rose 10.8% and Burgundy 5.2%. Sotheby's reported US$127.5 million in wine and spirits sales in 2025, up 12%.

What it costs to sell and to hold

Buyers want an unbroken record of professional, temperature-controlled storage, and missing provenance lowers prices, per the wine-software guide. In most US states an individual cannot sell alcohol or ship it to another individual without a licence, so most sales go through an auction house, a broker or a licensed retailer.

Fakes

Wine Spectator was quoted as saying that as much as 5% of wine sold on the secondary market could be counterfeit. That is an estimate and not a measurement, and it comes through a reference article. It points to why provenance carries weight: a bottle with a clear history from the producer is easier to sell than one with none.

Duty and moving bottles

Moving house is where wine meets the customs office. The European Union relief for personal belongings, for someone moving their normal home from outside the EU, excludes alcoholic products. Wine is therefore dutiable on import. The UK relief for people returning after 12 months abroad also excludes alcohol. A movers' guide lists wine and all alcohol as prohibited in household shipments to Mexico and Portugal, and that is an industry source and not a customs rule. For a US resident returning home, the free allowance is 1 litre within the US$800 allowance, or 5 litres within the larger US$1,600 allowance for US territories.

Tax and accounts

Wine is on the list of collectibles for US individual retirement accounts, and a UK registered pension holding wine faces tax charges on unauthorised payments because wine is tangible moveable property. Chubb requires appraisals for wine worth US$50,000 or more. In Canada, wine is ordinary personal-use property, not listed personal property. A Canadian law-firm article tells executors to check restrictions on wine along with firearms and cultural artifacts.

You might say: "I paid a lot for these, so they must be worth a lot." Prices come from what a buyer pays, and buyers pay for the bottle and for its history. The receipts and storage records are part of the value.

You could keep purchase records, the storage history and a bottle-by-bottle list in one folder where an executor can find it. You could also ask the children which bottles they would drink, and sell the rest.

What is in your cellar that nobody else knows the story of? Share it here. Someone may start a list this week.

Figures are estimates for planning, based on public data. Date read: October 2026.