Cult Wines - Fine Wine Market & Company Update
To our clients, investors, partners and stakeholders
We are writing to provide an update on the fine wine market, our latest financial results, and the position of Cult Wines as we move through 2026. We believe in communicating openly and directly, and this update reflects that commitment. The period behind us has been demanding. The period ahead is, we believe, the most compelling opportunity we have seen in eighteen years.
The macroeconomic and geopolitical environment has rarely felt more complex. Ongoing conflict in the Middle East, continued uncertainty in Eastern Europe, and a shifting global trade landscape are weighing on investor sentiment and introducing a degree of volatility across asset classes that few portfolios are fully insulated from. In that context, where capital is being deployed matters as much as how it is deployed.
This is precisely where the distinctive characteristics of fine wine become relevant. It is a physical asset with a historically low correlation to mainstream financial markets, with its correlation to the S&P 500 measured at approximately 0.11. That figure suggests a degree of insulation from equity market volatility, though it does not imply immunity. Fine wine is not without its own cyclical dynamics, as the period since 2022 has demonstrated.
Table of Contents
- 1. The Market Correction: Context and Perspective
- 2. Financial Update: Transparency and Forward Momentum
- 3. Our Track Record: Scale, Experience and Results
- 4. Our Vision: Transforming Fine Wine
- 5. World Class Storage, Custody and Client Asset Security
- 6. Powered by Technology and Infrastructure
- 7. Market Recovery: The Opportunity Now
- 8. Backed by Sophisticated Investors and the Coterie Partnership
- 9. Looking Ahead
1. The Market Correction: Context and Perspective
The fine wine market reached a peak in mid-2022, driven by a combination of genuine long-term demand growth and a significant influx of short-cycle capital seeking alternative assets. As global interest rates rose sharply through 2022 and 2023, that speculative capital exited the market quickly, compressing transaction volumes, suppressing prices and weighing on demand across the sector. The Liv-ex Fine Wine Investables Index retraced from its 2022 high of 415 to approximately 313, a decline of around 25% from peak to trough.
This correction was cyclical, not structural. The fundamental characteristics that make fine wine a compelling long-term asset class remain intact: finite supply, growing global demand, low correlation with traditional financial markets, and a deepening secondary market infrastructure. The 1997, 2008 and 2011 corrections all followed a similar pattern, and in each case the market recovered to establish a higher base (see graphic below).
Cult Wines has navigated this environment with discipline. We have reduced costs, protected our operational core, continued to invest in our platform, infrastructure, and systems. We are not the same company we were in 2022, and we believe that is to our clients' significant advantage.
2. Financial Update: Transparency and Forward Momentum
Our 2024 financial results reflect the challenging market conditions of the period. Revenue declined to £33.5m as trading activity slowed across the sector, and we were not alone. Some of the biggest and most established names in the market were not immune; Sotheby's and Berry Brothers both reported layoffs, falling revenues and losses.
Against that backdrop, the risks facing smaller, newly formed operators are thrown into even sharper relief.
We responded by reducing our operational cost base by nearly £4m in 2024 and have continued that trajectory into 2025. Despite these efforts, the revenue decline driven by wider market conditions meant we recorded an EBITDA loss of £2m for 2024, though we ended the year close to neutral. This trend continued into 2025, where we experienced a marked improvement despite continued difficult conditions. Q4 2025 was a positive end to the year for the wine market, and after an almost three-year downturn, having navigated the storm, reduced overheads significantly and improved operational efficiency, we enter 2026 on very strong foundations. We believe this is being demonstrated not only in our quality of service and technology advancements, but in the improvement to client portfolio performance over the last six months.
The £4.25m investment from Coterie Holdings in mid-2024 provided important support as we navigated falling revenues and brought our cost base into line, and it reflects something equally important: that sophisticated, well-informed capital looked closely at this business, understood the market conditions, and backed it with conviction. That is not something every business in this sector can say.
We are on a clear and measurable path toward profitability. Revenue is recovering alongside the broader market, costs are well controlled, and our platform is generating increasing engagement.
Across the opening months of 2026, CultX has recorded its strongest growth metrics since launch, with monthly GMV up 180% since the end of 2025, new user registrations in February 2026 more than twice the level seen in November 2025, and active bids now placed on 2,760 wines, equal to 57% bid coverage.
3. Our Track Record: Scale, Experience and Results
Cult Wines has been operating in the fine wine market since 2007. Over that time, we have built a track record that speaks to the durability of our model and the depth of our expertise. The numbers below reflect what we have delivered across multiple market cycles.
These figures represent real capital deployed, real assets managed and real returns delivered to clients over nearly two decades. They are the foundation of our credibility in this market and the standard we hold ourselves to as we move into the next phase of growth.
4. Our Vision: Transforming Fine Wine
Cult Wines is not a traditional wine merchant. It is not a wine investment or a wine brokerage firm. It is something that did not exist before we built it: an integrated ecosystem for buying, selling, collecting, investing in, and enjoying fine wine, powered by proprietary technology and supported by best-in-class infrastructure and data.
Our vision is to make fine wine as accessible, transparent and efficient as any other luxury and investable asset classes, while preserving everything that makes it unique.
To achieve that, we have built the following:
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- CultX: 24/7 fine wine trading marketplace, offering real-time price discovery across more than 12,000 active wine markets
- The Cult Wines client portal and mobile application, providing portfolio analytics, trading alerts and integrated storage tracking
- Proprietary market data and analytics, used by our team and increasingly by institutional partners
- A partnership with Coterie, one of the leading providers of professional bonded storage, offering best-in-class custody, insurance and logistics for client assets
5. World Class Storage, Custody & Client Asset Security
As a client of Cult Wines, your wine is stored at Coterie Vaults, a cutting-edge bonded warehouse, just 2.5 hours from London, the heart of the global wine market.
As the largest dedicated fine wine storage facility in Europe, Coterie Vaults offers optimal conditions, custody and security for long-term appreciation of fine wine.
Every wine held on behalf of a client is stored in that client's name, fully insured at market value, auditable in real time and entirely independent of Cult Wines balance sheet. Client wines are allocated, physical assets. They are not company property. Cult Wines holds them as bailee, which means we are the custodian, not the owner. See our Frequently Asked Questions.
This is not a matter of policy or discretion. It is codified in our agreements with Coterie Vaults and reflected in the legal ownership of every case we hold. Under the terms of our custody arrangements, Cult Wines has no ability to pledge, charge or otherwise encumber client wine for its own financing purposes. The beneficial ownership of your wine remains with you at all times.
For ease, included below a short extract from the agreement. In this context, 'Customer' refers to Cult Wines acting solely as the agent for its clients, not as principal owner of the wines.
Appendix 1
BENEFICAL CUSTOMER OWNERSHIP
1.1 Beneficial Ownership
The Customer will provide, to the Provider on a monthly basis, a file which identifies the Cult Wines Account Holder ID corresponding to the beneficial owner for every case of wine held by the Customer at the Facility, as of the date of the file. Stock belonging to the Customer will be specifically identified as "Cult Wines".
1.2 Definition
All cases (other than the cases identified as belonging to Cult Wines) within the Facility are owned by clients of the Customer and cannot be considered assets of the Customer. If the Customer ceases trading, all cases owned by clients would not be identifiable to an appropriate liquidator/third party as assets of the Customer. Full name and contact details for every client will be kept up to date and stored in an escrow account created and paid for by the Customer and the contents of such escrow account will be automatically released in accordance with the escrow account agreement. All clients are immediately liable for any storage and associated charges which arise from the date the Customer ceases trading.
6. Powered by Technology and Infrastructure
The Cult Wines Client Portal is not a bolt-on or an afterthought. It is a core part of what you pay us for, and we treat it that way. Our ambition is straightforward: to build and maintain the definitive platform for online wine investment management, one that sets the standard against which every other wine investment service is measured. That commitment means continuous investment, continuous improvement, and continuous delivery of new capability directly into your hands.
Earlier this year we completed the most significant upgrade to the portal since its launch. What you have access to today is a fundamentally different product, with a new design, a substantial set of new features, deeper data, and a level of functionality that we believe is unmatched anywhere in the wine investment world.
Your Portfolio. Reimagined. And We Are Just Getting Started
The upgrade was comprehensive. Across the platform you will now find:
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- A fully redesigned interface, cleaner, faster, and built around how investors actually use it.
- Real-time pricing and transactional data on every individual wine you hold.
- Individual historical price graphs for each wine in your portfolio, so you can see exactly how your holdings have moved over time.
- Tasting notes and critic scores from an extensive library covering Wine Advocate, and Vinous, attached directly to each wine you own.
- Drinking window data on every bottle, so you always know where your wines sit in their maturity curve.
- Portfolio Health scores: Average Grade, Fair Value and Liquidity give you an instant read on quality. Performance Momentum shows exactly how many holdings moved up, flat or down over 1, 3, 6 and 12 months.
- AI-generated insights on each wine, drawing on live performance data, trading activity and market context to give you a genuinely intelligent view of what you hold.
- Our proprietary Market Metrics Radar, a five-axis scoring system rating every wine across Critic Score, Fair Value, Liquidity, Vintage and Performance - intelligence that does not exist anywhere else.
- A live secondary market trading desk with over 1,200 active listings, with full bid, offer and last-traded price transparency on every wine.
- Your complete investment ledger: every position, cost basis, total return and P&L in a single sortable view.
Jonathan Stevenson, our EVP in North America, has recorded a short walkthrough below introducing the new features and functionality. If you have not explored the upgraded portal recently, we would encourage you to do so.
What Is Coming Next
The web portal upgrade is live now. At the end of this month, we are releasing the fully updated Cult Wines mobile app, bringing everything above to iOS and Android with a native mobile experience built for investors who want their portfolio in their pocket.
This is not a one-off push. The portal roadmap is active, and we are committed to shipping meaningful improvements on a regular basis. What you have today is considerably better than what existed six months ago. What you will have in six months will be considerably better still.
CultX Marketplace
CultX represents a step change in how fine wine is traded. Before its launch, fine wine buyers and sellers had to navigate fragmented auction cycles, opaque pricing and slow settlement processes. CultX changed that entirely. It operates continuously, offers real-time bid and offer pricing across thousands of wines, and provides the kind of liquidity and transparency that collectors and investors have long demanded but never had access to.
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- Over 12,000 active wine markets available around the clock
- Real-time price discovery benchmarked against Liv-ex and auction data
- Integrated settlement and storage transfer within the Coterie network
- Accessible via web and mobile with full portfolio and watchlist functionality
7. Market Recovery: The Opportunity Now
The data coming out of the fine wine market in recent months is encouraging. The Liv-ex 100 Index has risen approximately 3.9% over the past six months, the first sustained positive movement in the index since the 2022 peak. Transaction volumes are recovering. Institutional buyers and serious private collectors are re-entering the market, many of them looking to deploy capital at valuations they have not seen since 2016 and 2017.
We believe the current environment represents one of the most compelling entry points in a decade. Blue-chip Bordeaux, prestige Burgundy and benchmark Champagne are all available at material discounts to their recent highs. The speculative capital that inflated prices between 2020 and 2022 has exited. What remains is a market driven by genuine fundamentals: finite supply, growing demand from emerging wealth pools, and a deepening secondary market infrastructure.
Cult Wines' platform, network and execution capability put us in a stronger position to capitalise on this phase of the cycle than at any point in our history. We have the data, the relationships, the technology and the operational infrastructure to move quickly and intelligently as conditions continue to improve.
8. Backed by Sophisticated Investors and the Coterie Partnership
Our partnership with Coterie is a central pillar of the Cult Wines ecosystem. Coterie provides professional bonded storage, custody and logistics services integrated directly with our platform. This means that when a client buys wine through CultX or through our managed account service, the wine moves seamlessly into their allocated storage account, tracked in real time and accessible via the client portal.
This integration is operationally significant, but it is also a statement of intent. We are building an ecosystem in which every part of the fine wine journey, from discovery and purchase through storage, management and eventual sale, is connected, transparent and efficient. Coterie's infrastructure is a critical part of making that possible.
Beyond Coterie, our ecosystem of sophisticated investors continues to grow with backing from experts in the fields of finance, tech and fine wine.
We work with a network of international clients, trade partners, family offices, institutional buyers and private collectors who engage with the Cult Wines platform in a variety of ways. That network is a competitive asset that has taken years to build and continues to strengthen.
Backed by experts in the fields of finance, tech and fine wine
Investors in Cult Wines include:
- Christophe Navarre, ex-CEO of Moet-Hennessy
- Christopher Jones, ex-CIO Blackrock & JP Morgan
- Reda Bedjaoui, CEO & Founder of P3 Money
- Coterie Holdings, strategic investor in the wine sector
- Valtteri Bottas, Formula One Driver & drinks investor
- Robeson Reeves, CEO of Bally's
9. Looking Ahead
Cult Wines has navigated one of the most challenging periods the fine wine market has experienced in a generation. We have done so by making difficult decisions early, strengthening our operational core and continuing to invest in the future.
The platform is stronger than it has ever been. The technology is ahead of anything else in the market. Our relationships with clients, partners and institutions are deepening. And the market is beginning to turn in a way that plays directly to our strengths.
We are grateful to our clients for their patience, continued trust and engagement with us through this period. We do not take that lightly. We believe the next chapter of Cult Wines will demonstrate more clearly than ever why fine wine, managed well and supported by the right infrastructure, belongs in a sophisticated investment portfolio.
We look forward to sharing that journey with you.
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