Selling a cellar: auction, merchant, or quietly.
Most collections are sold badly, and almost always for the same reason: the seller chose the route before doing the inventory.
A cellar usually comes to market for one of three reasons: an inheritance, a move, or the realisation at seventy that nobody is going to drink four hundred bottles. In all three the seller is under time pressure and knows less about the market than the people they are about to negotiate with. This note is the other side of the table.
The three routes, and what they net
Auction. The house catalogues, photographs, stores and sells. You pay a seller's commission, typically in the region of 10 to 15% and negotiable on a large or attractive consignment, and the buyer pays a premium of roughly 20 to 25% on top of the hammer price. That spread is why the same bottle can appear to cost a buyer CHF 1,000 while paying the seller CHF 700. Add insurance, photography and sometimes a lotting fee. Settlement comes weeks after the sale.
The Swiss market has real depth here. Geneva has specialist fine-wine auctioneers alongside the international houses, and Zürich has an established auction tradition of its own. Auction is the right answer for famous names in famous formats, and a poor one for the eccentric two-thirds of most cellars.
Merchant. A trade buyer makes one offer for everything and pays quickly. The offer will sit well below retail, because the merchant is carrying the stock, the storage, the risk and the time. The convenience is real and so is the discount.
Private placement. A specialist finds the individual buyer for individual bottles. It nets the most and takes the longest, and it only works where provenance is documented and the intermediary has a genuine circle of collectors rather than a mailing list. This is what we do, which is a disclosure rather than a claim.
The part that decides the number
Whichever route you take, the value is set before you contact anyone.
- Inventory every bottle. Producer, cuvée, vintage, format, quantity. Not "Bordeaux, mixed".
- Record the fill level of anything older than about 1990. A top-shoulder fill
and a mid-shoulder fill on the same vintage are two different prices, and pretending otherwise gets found out at the first inspection.
- Photograph each significant bottle: front label, back label, capsule top, and the shoulder against a
plain background so the level is visible.
- Find the paper. Original invoices, the shipper's documents, the storage statements. Provenance is the
cheapest value you will ever add to a collection, and it is free if you have kept the folder.
- Note the original wooden cases. A sealed OWC is worth more than the twelve bottles inside it. Do not
break one up to make the inventory tidier.
- Do not move the wine twice. Every journey costs money and risks condition. Decide the route first, then
move it once.
The single most expensive mistake we see: a cellar removed in August, in an unrefrigerated van, to be
photographed somewhere convenient. Several weeks later the fills have dropped and the buyers have noticed.
A word on Swiss tax
General information, not advice, and worth confirming with your own adviser for your canton.
For a Swiss-resident private individual, a gain on the sale of private movable property is generally not subject to income tax. Wine in a private cellar normally falls in that category. The position changes if the activity is judged to be commercial dealing rather than private asset management, which turns on frequency, borrowing, and how systematically you buy to resell.
Separately, Switzerland levies an annual wealth tax on worldwide movable assets, and a valuable cellar is part of your taxable wealth whether you ever sell it or not. Inheritance and gift tax is cantonal, and in most cantons direct descendants pay little or nothing.
What we do
We buy nothing and we hold no stock of our own. We represent a single private cellar built over four decades and place its bottles with collectors, mostly in Switzerland. Where a collector here wants to sell rather than buy, we say plainly which of the three routes fits the cellar, including the two we do not profit from.
If you are looking at a cellar and do not know where to start, the inventory above is the whole of the first step, and it costs an afternoon. Send it to us and we will tell you which route it belongs in.
What commission does a wine auction house charge the seller?
Typically around 10 to 15% of the hammer price, negotiable on large or desirable consignments, with the buyer paying a further premium of roughly 20 to 25%. Insurance, photography and lotting may be additional.
Is a gain on selling my wine collection taxable in Switzerland?
For a Swiss-resident private individual, gains on private movable property are generally not subject to income tax, unless the activity amounts to commercial dealing. A valuable cellar is nevertheless part of your assets for the annual cantonal wealth tax. Confirm your own position with an adviser.
What is the first thing to do with an inherited cellar?
A bottle-by-bottle inventory with producer, vintage, format and fill level, and photographs of anything significant, before contacting any buyer. Value is lost in the first conversation far more often than in the last one.
Auction or private sale?
Auction suits famous names in standard formats and gives a public price. Private placement nets more on single old bottles and unusual wines, and needs documented provenance. Most real cellars contain both, and splitting the collection between the two routes usually beats committing all of it to one.