In the mood for wine: The Business of Wine

The Business of Wine is a podcast brought to you by In the mood for wine, an independent publication for the next generation of wine lovers, collectors and investors. ⁠⁠Subscribe to In the mood for wine ⁠⁠for weekly insights into the business, economics and culture of fine wine.*Can you start a winery with just $10,000? That’s just ludicrous!But Mallorca’s 4Kilos offers an intriguing starting point. Founded in 2006 by Francesc Grimalt and Sergio Caballero with an initial investment of just €24,000 — four million pesetas, or 4 kilos, as the amount was colloquially expressed in Spain — the winery takes its name from a modest sum that helped launch something distinctive.Is that proof that vision and ingenuity can matter more than money? Or is it just a romantic notion?I put the question to Charles Outhwaite, who co-founded Ambriel, an English sparkling wine producer in Sussex, with his wife Wendy. We met in Bordeaux at the European Economics Association, where we were both invited to contribute to a panel discussion on the wine business. Charles’s perspective was particularly interesting: before becoming a winemaker, he spent three decades as an investment banker at Evercore.He kindly agreed to humour me in this episode of The Business of Wine by exploring whether it’s possible to start a winery with $10,000. My original challenge, admittedly, was even more absurd: could he do it with just $1,000?We work through the economics line by line, examining the costs, trade-offs and creative choices involved in building a wine business from the ground up — and whether you can make it work without deep pockets. Because making great wine is one thing but building a business around it is quite another.Happy listening!

The Business of Wine is a podcast brought to you by In the mood for wine, an independent publication for the next generation of wine lovers, collectors and investors. ⁠Subscribe to In the mood for wine ⁠for weekly insights into the business, economics and culture of fine wine.*To understand Bordeaux, one needs to understand La Place. And who better to tell its story than Jean-Christophe Mau? Few people can explain how Bordeaux really works from so many angles: château owner, négociant family, operator, insider. Today he is focused on Château Brown in Pessac-Léognan. Before that, he ran Château Preuillac for his family and was part of the Yvon Mau négociant business.I am genuinely grateful Jean-Christophe Mau agreed to do this. Bordeaux does not like explaining itself, especially to outsiders. I have approached plenty of people over time. The usual answer is: “We don’t speak to journalists.” But I am not a journalist!—I protest.Others will talk, but only off the record. Which is precisely why Bordeaux so often remains misunderstood.More than two decades ago, a young Jean-Christophe told Margaret Rand, in Inheritance: Heirs Apparent, that “too many people in Bordeaux don’t understand what the consumer wants. In the past, there wasn’t the same competition – wine drinkers had no choice but to buy Bordeaux.”That concern still hangs over Bordeaux. It certainly hung over this conversation. We spoke about release prices, speculation, oversupply, critics, the gap between châteaux and final consumers, and the strain now showing across the en primeur system.In particular, we covered:Why Bordeaux’s problem may be bigger than simply “prices are too high” [00:53], and why release prices have drifted away from the secondary market [01:56]How Bordeaux actually sets en primeur release prices [03:02]Whether Bordeaux has lost touch with the final consumer [06:18]Why volume matters, and why Bordeaux cannot behave like Burgundy [08:43]Whether châteaux have tried to take too much of the margin [13:08]The strengths and weaknesses of La Place today [19:23]The pricing practices that distort the market [28:54]What Jean-Christophe Mau expects from the 2025 campaign [38:19]

The Business of Wine is a podcast brought to you by In the mood for wine, an independent publication for the next generation of wine lovers, collectors and investors. ⁠Subscribe to In the mood for wine ⁠for weekly insights into the business, economics and culture of fine wine.*Bloomberg reported that alcohol businesses are being pushed into high-yield private credit as consumption and margins fall.Personally, I’ve heard this sentiment echoed by merchants. One told me: “There is no consumer crisis. There is a debt crisis.”Another said: “High-street banks have basically become too difficult and expensive to deal with. They have zero appetite for risk and no interest in developing meaningful relationships with start-ups and SMEs. This means start-ups rely on friends and family, crowdfunding and seed investors, and larger and later-stage businesses also look to the diverse world of private credit.”In other words, a new ecosystem is emerging — one that could end up being better tailored to each business’s needs.Lily Feng is the CEO of Jera Wine, the financing arm of Coterie Holding. Jera specialises in lending against blue-chip wine collections, giving restaurants, merchants and private collectors a way to unlock capital without immediately selling stock.Jera is far from the only company offering this — and in this video, Lily explains the dynamics of wine-backed lending: how they value wine as collateral, what they will and won’t lend against, how they think about risk in a softer market, and where wine-backed finance might sit in the industry over the next few years.

The Business of Wine is a podcast brought to you by In the mood for wine, an independent publication for the next generation of wine lovers, collectors and investors. ⁠Subscribe to In the mood for wine ⁠for weekly insights into the business, economics and culture of fine wine.*On Friday 20 February, the Supreme Court ruled that President Trump’s use of IEEPA (the International Emergency Economic Powers Act) to impose tariffs was unconstitutional — and wine is right at the centre of this story.A small New York wine importer, VOS Selections, brought the case that helped put new limits on presidential power on tariffs. Despite what Trump administration officials may claim, the ruling is likely to deter any serious attempt to revive “emergency” tariffs in the same way. Tariffs sit with Congress. Congress can lend that authority to the President in specific circumstances — but only through clear statutes and with limits. Victor Owen Schwartz, founder of VOS Selections, joins me to explain why he felt compelled to act — and why he sees wine as the “canary in the coal mine”, a bellwether for international trade.It was inspiring to hear how he found himself in the eye of the storm. I think you’ll find a bit of hope — and a lot of resilience — in his story too.

The Business of Wine is a podcast brought to you by In the mood for wine, an independent publication for the next generation of wine lovers, collectors and investors. ⁠Subscribe to In the mood for wine ⁠for weekly insights into the business, economics and culture of fine wine.*I asked ChatGPT “How can you pay for something and it still not be yours?” It replied: “If you pay to buy it and it’s still not yours, it’s a gift.”Not quite. What I was referring to was a scandal in the wine world that unfolded a week before Christmas, the Oeno Group scandal, that is agitating the wine world and has struck at the roots of one of the most crucial, least regarded issues: ownership. On 19 December 2025, London-based wine investment firm Oeno Group published a notice at the request of the City of London Corporation’s Trading Standards Service warning that “Oeno has recently ceased trading.”While there is suspicion of foul play, what has left many customers most perplexed is this: despite receiving invoices and certificates of authenticity and ownership, the City of London Trading Standards Service wrote on Oeno’s website that “only 20% of client wine is held in individual customer accounts that the customer will be able to access.”So, how can you pay for wine and it still not be yours?To answer that, I sat down with Vincent O’Brien, Managing Director of Octavian Wine Services, one of the world’s leading fine-wine storage providers. We discussed what “ownership” actually means in practice; how to verify your wine is held in your name; why unique case identifiers and customer portals matter; what documentation you need if a merchant or investment firm collapses; and how weak record-keeping can blur provenance and destroy value.But I am still left with one question: why does the market have so much faith that the wine is actually there?Is it blind trust, naivety, or ignorance of how custody works? A belief that an invoice equals ownership? Or simply that checking feels like too much effort until something goes wrong? Before visiting Octavian last November, I was the same.