Wine Basics
Wine Investing
Apr 24, 2025
A Beginner's Guide to Wine (2024)
This is an introduction to the five main types of wine, their common characteristics, famous producers, and potential food pairings.
For the beginner wine enthusiast, this guide will give you the foundation you need to learn in more depth. It must be said however that the number one way to learn about wine is to drink it, so pour yourself a glass and have a read.
1. Red Wine
Red, Red Wine
What It Is
Red wine is made from dark-colored grape varieties. The color comes from the grape skins, which are left in contact with the juice during fermentation. This process also imparts tannins, which contribute to the wine’s structure and aging potential.
Taste and Characteristics
Red wines are known for their rich, bold flavors and deep, dark hues. They range from light and fruity to robust and tannic. Common red wine varieties include:
Cabernet Sauvignon: Full-bodied with notes of blackcurrant, cedar, and tobacco.
Merlot: Smooth and medium-bodied, with flavors of plum, black cherry, and chocolate.
Pinot Noir: Light to medium-bodied, with red fruit flavors like cherry and raspberry, and earthy undertones.
Syrah/Shiraz: Full-bodied with dark fruit flavors, pepper, and spice.
Famous Producers
Château Margaux (Bordeaux, France): Known for its elegant and age-worthy Cabernet Sauvignon-based blends.
Domaine de la Romanée-Conti (Burgundy, France): Renowned for its exceptional Pinot Noir.
Penfolds (Australia): Famous for its robust and complex Shiraz, particularly Penfolds Grange.
Aging Potential
Red wines generally age well due to their higher tannin content. Tannins act as natural preservatives, allowing the wine to develop more complex flavors over time. Some red wines, like Bordeaux blends, can be aged for decades.
Food Pairings
Red wines pair excellently with hearty dishes. Here are some classic pairings:
Cabernet Sauvignon: Grilled steak, lamb, and aged cheeses.
Pinot Noir: Roast chicken, salmon, and mushroom dishes.
Merlot: Pasta with tomato-based sauces, roast pork, and soft cheeses.
2. White Wine
What It Is
White wine is made from white grape varieties or red grapes with the skins removed before fermentation. This results in a lighter color and different flavor profile compared to red wine.
Taste and Characteristics
White wines are typically lighter and crisper than red wines, with flavors ranging from fruity and floral to creamy and nutty. Popular white wines include:
Chardonnay: Versatile, ranging from crisp and citrusy to rich and buttery, often with oak influence.
Sauvignon Blanc: Known for its high acidity and flavors of green apple, lime, and herbs.
Riesling: Can be dry or sweet, with high acidity and flavors of peach, apricot, and petrol.
Famous Producers
Domaine Leflaive (Burgundy, France): Acclaimed for its complex and age-worthy Chardonnays.
Cloudy Bay (New Zealand): Celebrated for its vibrant and aromatic Sauvignon Blanc.
Weingut Dr. Loosen (Mosel, Germany): Renowned for its elegant and expressive Rieslings.
Aging Potential
While most white wines are best enjoyed young and fresh, some, like high-quality Chardonnays, can age gracefully for several years, developing richer, more complex flavors.
Food Pairings
White wines are versatile and pair well with a variety of foods:
Chardonnay: Seafood, poultry, and creamy pasta dishes.
Sauvignon Blanc: Goat cheese, green salads, and shellfish.
Riesling: Spicy Asian cuisine, pork, and apple desserts.
3. Rosé Wine
What It Is
Rosé wine is made from red grapes but has minimal skin contact during fermentation, resulting in a pink hue. The short maceration period gives rosé its characteristic light color and fresh flavor profile.
Taste and Characteristics
Rosé wines are typically light, refreshing, and fruity, with flavors of strawberry, raspberry, and citrus. They can range from dry to sweet.
Famous Producers
Château d’Esclans (Provence, France): Known for its luxurious rosé, Whispering Angel.
Domaines Ott (Provence, France): Celebrated for its premium rosé wines with complex flavors.
Bodegas Muga (Rioja, Spain): Renowned for its well-balanced and aromatic rosé.
Aging Potential
Rosé wines are best enjoyed young and fresh, within a year or two of their release, to fully appreciate their bright, vibrant flavors.
Food Pairings
Rosé wines are perfect for warm weather and pair well with a variety of dishes:
Dry Rosé: Grilled vegetables, seafood, and light salads.
Sweet Rosé: Fruit salads, mild cheeses, and spicy dishes.
4. Sparkling Wine
What It Is
Sparkling wine is known for its effervescence, which is created by carbon dioxide bubbles formed during a secondary fermentation process. This can take place in the bottle (traditional method) or in large tanks (Charmat method).
Taste and Characteristics
Sparkling wines can range from bone dry to sweet, with flavors of green apple, pear, citrus, and brioche. Popular types include:
Champagne: From the Champagne region of France, known for its complexity and finesse.
Prosecco: From Italy, typically lighter and fruitier.
Cava: From Spain, often more robust and toasty than Prosecco.
Famous Producers
Moët & Chandon (Champagne, France): One of the most famous Champagne houses, known for its luxury and quality.
Veuve Clicquot (Champagne, France): Celebrated for its rich and full-bodied Champagnes.
R. López de Heredia (Rioja, Spain): Known for its traditional and high-quality Cava.
Aging Potential
High-quality sparkling wines like Champagne can age for several years, developing richer, more nuanced flavors. However, most sparkling wines are best enjoyed young to retain their fresh, lively bubbles.
Food Pairings
Sparkling wines are incredibly versatile and can be paired with a wide range of foods:
Champagne: Oysters, caviar, and fried foods.
Prosecco: Fresh fruit, light appetizers, and soft cheeses.
Cava: Tapas, seafood paella, and cured meats.
5. Dessert Wine
What It Is
Dessert wines are sweet wines often enjoyed at the end of a meal. They are made using various methods, including late harvest, botrytis (noble rot), and fortification, to concentrate sugars and flavors.
Taste and Characteristics
Dessert wines can range from light and honeyed to rich and syrupy. Famous dessert wines include:
Port: A fortified wine from Portugal, known for its rich, sweet flavors and high alcohol content.
Sauternes: A botrytized wine from Bordeaux, France, noted for its luscious sweetness and complexity.
Moscato: A light, sweet wine with floral and fruity notes, often with a slight sparkle.
Famous Producers
Taylor’s (Douro, Portugal): Renowned for its high-quality Ports.
Château d’Yquem (Bordeaux, France): Legendary for its exceptional Sauternes.
Astoria (Italy): Known for its delightful and aromatic Moscato d’Asti.
Aging Potential
Many dessert wines have excellent aging potential due to their high sugar content, which acts as a natural preservative. For example, a fine Port can age for decades, developing deep, complex flavors.
Food Pairings
Dessert wines are best enjoyed with complementary sweet or savory dishes:
Port: Blue cheese, dark chocolate, and nuts.
Sauternes: Foie gras, fruit tarts, and creamy cheeses.
Moscato: Fresh berries, light cakes, and sorbets.
Conclusion
Exploring the world of wine can be a delightful journey, full of discovery and enjoyment. By understanding the five main types of wine and their unique characteristics, you can make more informed choices for your collection and enhance your dining experiences with perfect pairings. Cheers to your wine adventure!
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15 Oct 2025
How To Spot a Wine Investment Scam
Written by Callum Woodcock, WineFi's CEO
In August 2025, three people were convicted of fraudulent trading relating to a complex wine fraud run by Imperial Wines and Spirits Merchants Ltd.
The scam involved extortionate mark-ups, sometimes as high as 400%, on what appear to have been legitimately investment-grade wines like Chateau Mouton-Rothschild. At the same time, the company falsely led prospective clients to believe that Imperial did not make any money at all until the wines were sold for a profit.
Whilst most clients did actually own the wines they were told they had purchased, a number of victims had no wine at all despite paying thousands of pounds.
What is most striking is that this company was in operation for a decade — from 2008 to 2018, when their offices were finally raided by Trading Standards.
Given the esoteric nature of fine wine as an asset class, most investors choose to invest through a dedicated company — be it a merchant or a specialist fine wine investment firm.
While there are many reputable operators, the unregulated status of the market inevitably attracts its share of bad actors — from deliberate fraudsters to the merely incompetent.
The good news is that it is surprisingly easy to distinguish credible operators from questionable ones — provided you know what to look for.
There are three key questions to ask when investing in wine.
1. Are you being ripped off?
Fine wine is unique amongst collectibles in that it has a third-party “list price”. These are not firm bids but asking prices — a lot like residential property. These prices serve as a yardstick for what the wines are worth at the time of purchase.
There are a number of publicly-available platforms that allow you to search for a wine based on producer and vintage — for example, Wine Searcher.
Filtering the location as the United Kingdom and only choosing wines that are “In Bond” should give you a more accurate picture. GBP prices are the de facto international reference given the UK is the largest global hub for fine wine trading.
You’ll quickly be able to get a sense of whether the price you are paying is fair or inflated.
The ease with which investors can validate this makes the Imperial Wines scam sadder, as it was entirely avoidable. They appear to have intentionally targeted "confused pensioners" who were less likely to be tech-savvy.
How WineFi Does It
So, what does "good" look like?
At WineFi, we show both the Liv-ex Market Price and the lowest Wine Searcher price on our platform to provide investors with an independent benchmark of what their portfolio is worth. We also compare our syndicate performance against market indices
We do this so investors never have to "take our word" for what their wines are worth, and can judge our benchmark our performance against the broader wine market.
2. Does your wine actually exist?
Given fine wine must be stored “in bond” (meaning in a government bonded warehouse to protect its resale value — more on why here) there is a third-party custodian that should be able to verify which wines are stored under your name, and whether they are ring-fenced.
You should be able to communicate directly with the warehouse (they are your wines, after all) rather than simply your broker in order to verify that your holdings are where you believe them to be.
One well-publicised whisky investment scam was exposed when a client began calling the warehouse where he casks were supposedly stored — only to find that they weren’t there.
How WineFi does it
At WineFi, we store wines with Coterie Vaults.
Fine wines held by both our syndicates and private clients are stored under the names of the individual owners, allowing our clients to independently verify their existence and ownership by contacting the warehouse.
They are ring-fenced from our own account to ensure that even in the event WineFi was to cease trading they remain the property of our underlying investors.
Is your wine actually worth anything?
This is a personal bête noire.
In recent years, we have seen a number of “investment” portfolios containing wines that have no secondary market price.
Given wine pays no yield, the only way to make money investing in this asset class is to eventually sell the wines on the secondary market.
If that secondary market does not exist, that particular wine has no resale value and therefore cannot be considered investment-grade.
Secondary market liquidity is therefore of critical importance when considering what to invest in.
This is where the water gets murky.
If you are looking to speculate on which producers are likely to break through in the future, you may be comfortable with this. However, these wines — by default — have no independent secondary market price.
Most investors are not looking to take moonshot punts on the next breakout producer, and yet we are regularly sent portfolios for review that are comprised of dozens of non investment-grade wines which still show a “market price” — which can only have come from the broker and is therefore unverifiable.
Until there is a trade on the secondary market, the value of that particular wine is zero.
How WineFi does it
At WineFi, secondary market liquidity and brand equity are two of the key factors that we examine when selecting portfolios.
We currently offer free portfolio reviews to those who have concerns about their holdings. To try and fight this issue at scale, we are developing a free application that will allow anyone to upload a CSV of their holdings and identify the investment-worthiness of their portfolios.
Conclusion
Fine wine can be both a compelling investment. However, as an unregulated asset class with significant information asymmetry between buyers and sellers, it can also create opportunities for misconduct.
While the market is becoming more professionalised and transparent, bad behaviour persists.
The best protection is to do your own research: check Trustpilot reviews for the company you are working with, and familiarise yourself with the best-practice principles outlined above.
If you’re already a wine investor and would like WineFi to review your portfolio — with no fee, no obligation, and no upsell — we’d be happy to take a look.
For more information, get in touch with our investment team.
Wine Investing
6 Oct 2025
WineFi Q3 2025 Quarterly Report
Introduction
We’re extremely excited to share our quarterly wine market report - delivering the most detailed view of the wine markets through Q3 2025.
This is a singularly important report, because this quarter we have seen strong signs of meaningful market stabilisation.
The WineFi Trade Price Index has increased in value for the first time since 2022, after almost 3 years of consecutive decline.
