Wine Appraisal & How Much your Wine is Worth
Getting to know your wine value
An important step in selling your wine is figuring out how much it’s worth, but also you should also keep in mind that you’re not likely to get the current market worth but 20%-30% below that. If you’re the person who actually purchases the wine you may have a general idea of value of each wine but it’s very important to know that fine wine prices fluctuate over time. Also an appraisal or value opinion (there is a difference) at this stage is more about comparing prices, this doesn't mean a full provenance inspection. 2 ways to do this:
Self Wine Appraisal
Best place to figure out how much your wine is worth, in our opinion, is on wine-searcher.com. It’s probably the biggest and most robust price comparison engine for wines. This is what wine professionals and wine collectors use to benchmark prices. It's not a professional appraisal but it gives a good idea of the retail value of practically any wine. Here are some tips for using Wine-searcher.com:
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Rely on the price in your own country. If a wine isn’t showing it’s available in your country you can search all countries to establish it’s worth
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You’ll see that auction prices are typically lower than retail prices – you can value based on the low retail (not on average retail)
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If your on the free version of Wine-searcher.com you may not see all the stores that have the wine (you need pro version for that) but for the purposes of your list it’s good enough just be mindful that the “sell us your wine” stores and wine appraisals may get lower prices results
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Wine-searcher usually has pictures of the wine labels so it helps to compare to your wine to make sure it’s the same
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Wine-searcher even has a wine cellar calculator that allows you to put multiple wines at once, although this could be problematic with winery names etc.
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Another way to gauge auction prices is with Wineauctionprices.com
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CellarTracker, the leading wine cellar management system has information on 60M wines - they have an automatic appraisal feature - see interview we did with CellarTracker founder, Eric LeVine.
Professional Wine Appraisals and Value Opinions
Another way is to have someone else do the work for you:
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Many wine stores will be happy to appraise (or more accurately provide a value opinion) your collection based on a submitted list and most of them will do it for free because they hope you’ll sell your wine to them, but please remember if your letting the buyer be the sole appraiser, you may be getting the short side of the stick so it’s a good idea to price check their appraisals
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SellWineGuide.com can help. Although we don’t currently appraise wine collections, if you wish to share your list with us we’ll be happy to take a look and point you in the right direction
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You can hire a certified sommelier or other wine professional – we've listed below 2 certified appraisers
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Insurance companies may also be able to appraise your collection
Christina Pate is a 15 year veteran of fine wine, specializing in the valuation and management of private wine collections as well as sourcing wines for clients and businesses. Christina's experience provides practical and informed advice on where to buy and sell wine Link
Edgerton Wine Appraisals
Winery & Wine Appraisals
Tom DiNardo has worked in the wine industry since 1988 and is an internationally acclaimed wine appraisal and counterfeit identification expert. A certified sommelier, expert witness, wine auctioneer, wine educator, wine writer, consulting wine expert, and international wine judge Link
William and Annie Edgerton can help with your wine appraisal needs. William is an internationally-recognized expert in wine appraisal and counterfeit identification and has been certified as an Accredited Senior Wine Appraiser by the American Society of Appraisers. Link