Wealth Preservation Strategies for Private Clients
Lafleur is an independent advisory that builds and holds directly owned fine wine portfolios for private clients and family offices whose first concern is preserving capital rather than chasing a return.
Portfolios typically begin at €20,000, and many clients build toward €100,000 and beyond.
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Who We Work With
We work best with investors who are holding for ten years or longer, because fine wine rewards patience and shorter horizons tend to disappoint. Most already have capital working in equities, property or private equity, and treat wine as one part of a wider allocation rather than a replacement for any of it.
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Portfolios typically begin at €20,000, below which it is difficult to build a selection with enough spread to be worth holding. Our clients also prefer to deal direct, so there are no account managers and no platform between you and the people making the decisions.
What We Do
Source. We source each wine independently, wherever it is best bought, and pass it to you at the price we paid with nothing added on top.
Store. Everything is held under bond at Hillebrand in Beaune in your own name, fully insured, and outside duty and VAT for as long as it stays there.
Document. We document provenance without a break from acquisition through to sale, because that record is a material part of what the holding is worth at the point of transfer.
Exit. When you decide to sell, we plan the exit with you rather than pushing wine into whatever market happens to be open.
What It Costs, In Full
There is no management fee and no subscription, and we add no mark-up to what we buy for you. Three numbers cover the whole arrangement.
0% markup
You pay what we pay. We buy through established merchant networks at trade prices and pass them to you at cost, and you see the invoice. Most platforms take a spread at this point that is never disclosed.
​12% commission
We charge this once, when we acquire wine for you, and it is agreed before anything is bought. It covers the first three years of bonded storage and insurance, so there is nothing further to pay while the portfolio sits.
10% profit share
We take this only on net gains and only when you sell, so we are paid when you are. If the portfolio does not grow, we earn nothing further from it.
Why Fine Wine Preserves Value
Fine wine has historically held its value through equity and bond drawdowns, with little correlation to either, because it is priced by scarcity and drinking demand rather than by interest rates or earnings.
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Supply cannot be increased. Grand Cru vineyards are measured in single hectares and their boundaries cannot be extended, so every bottle opened reduces permanently what is left.
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Because your wine is held in bond in your own name with unbroken provenance, it transfers or sells without the valuation disputes that attach to assets with no transparent market. That matters most at the point a holding passes to someone else.
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The longer argument, including how fine wine compares with property and private equity and how much belongs in a diversified portfolio, is set out in the Fine Wine Investment Guide. For the qualities that make an individual holding suitable for preservation, see what makes a fine wine portfolio suitable for wealth preservation.
When Fine Wine Is The Wrong Asset
Fine wine produces no income, cannot be liquidated in a morning at scale, and punishes a forced sale into a weak market. It also depends on correct storage and unbroken provenance, because a wine without a documented history is worth materially less than the same wine with one.
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If you need the capital inside three years, or income along the way, we will tell you this is not the right asset for you. Ten years is a sensible minimum.
Start a Private Conversation
Tell us what you already hold and what you are protecting against, and we will come back with a view on whether a wine allocation makes sense, what size it would need to be and what it would cost. If the answer is no, we will say so.
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We are based in Geneva, so meeting in person is straightforward. Before we speak, you may want to read How We Work, how to build a portfolio, or how a structured sale works when it is time to exit.