Berry Bros' Cellar Plan

thegentleway

Does anybody invest in/recommend BBR's cellar plan?

Looking at long term investments and tempted by this. I like wine but don't know anything about fine wines apart from they seem to be doing well.

Malthusian

thegentleway wrote: »

I like wine but don't know anything about fine wines apart from they seem to be doing well.

Then you definitely shouldn't buy it, per rule no. 2 of investing: "Don't invest in what you don't understand".

The wine investment market is entirely unregulated because the law regards it as buying booze rather than an investment, even when it is being sold as an investment. This emphasises that you have no hope of making money out of it unless you are an expert on wine.

Do you have a diversified portfolio of mainstream regulated stockmarket funds? If not, you should be looking at one of those first. If you do, any particular reason not to add to that?

dealer_wins

I would avoid any of these "investments". Highly Illiquid and highly likely to lose you some if not all your money if you ask me!

ffacoffipawb

dealer_wins wrote: »

I would avoid any of these "investments". Highly Illiquid and highly likely to lose you some if not all your money if you ask me!

Wine is very liquid.

However, three little words ...

Los Pandos Vineyard

Just be very careful.

Reed_Richards

Have a look at this: https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/5864628/dodgy-wine-investment&highlight=wine&page=3#topofpage . Read the first post and the outcome at the bottom of Page 3. I am not suggesting there is any link whatsoever between the company in question and Berry Bros but it shows you what can go wrong.

DrSyn

1. Do not invest in what you do not understand.

2. Keep away from unregulated investments.

These two simple rules are used by me. Suggest you keep them in mind.

How did you get to hear about this investment?

capital0ne

thegentleway wrote: »

I like wine

don't know anything about fine wines

they seem to be doing well.

1 If you like wine you may be tempted to drink your investment!

2 You don't know anything about wine

3 So how do you know they seem to be doing well?

Those are your answers

DrSyn

Do follow up what post 5 suggests you read.

Round_The_Bend

Berry Brothers & Rudd is a very fine and well established wine merchant but the cellar plan is not intended to be an investment product. It is a means for wine lovers to build a cellar of wines that they will drink in the future. Buying wines when they are initially released is usually cheaper than when they have fully matured and this is what such plans are intended for.

My advice is to look elsewhere for your investments (e.g. Vanguard, Fundsmith, etc.) but if you want to develop a taste in good wines, then merchants such as Berry Bros. are a good place to start. Have fun.

katsu

I agree that Berry Brothers & Rudd are a legitimate company with staff who know wines, as I have worked with customers of theirs for some years. Those colleagues liked drinking wine and drinking special wine as a treat (I have no idea how long they keep some wine but they definitely do drink wine that they have been saving) so agree with what Round The... has posted.

Malthusian

While I also see no red flags about Berry Bros in particular, and the Cellar Plan is mostly marketed as a way to buy fine wines rather than a get-rich-quick investment scheme, it is worth noting that a wine business being in business for c. 15 years is no guarantee that it is a good investment.

Partly because past performance is no guide to the future etc etc. Partly because there is no reason you can't stay in business for 15 years by selling wine for far more than it is worth, as long as you can keep finding suckers. The wine investment sector is entirely unregulated and nobody is going to stop you.

If the OP is looking at wine as an investment despite having no expertise in wine, it is quite possible that they have been suckered by one of the ads on Facebook or Instagram promoting wine as an investment and from there Googled their way from the original scammer to a legitimate merchant.