Vinovest Reviews 

THEY HAVE STOLEN FROM ME, SOLD MY WINE AND KEPT THE MONEY! STAY AWAY ITS A SCAM. NOW I HAVE TO INVOLVE THE LAW FOR THIS AND IT MAKES ME SICK!

I have been with vineovest since past 3 yrs. definitely this is shady and scam business. I m figuring out if is there a legal way that can be proceeded with this compnay as whatever they have advertised and practices they are carrying are shrewd and customer support sucks.

Do not invest with this company! I have been contacting support weekly to try to liquidate my "managed portfolio", and have not gotten a single response. What good is an investment if you can't liquidate it, or even contact the people who hold your investment. I 100% regret investing with Vinovest.

I previously wrote a review on 29 Jan. Vinovest has actioned my complaint. A company operating to good procedures doesn't need bad reviews to get favourable responses. I don't know even if any notice is taken of these reviews by the current members. Certainly are though by prospective members doing there research. For me I believe there are better ways to invest, however for those of you who want some excitement, go ahead and experience wine investment. To describe it in another way, it's like the stock market in slow motion.

I received an email with an offer to get started on investing in whiskey barrels. I made some deposits to start and wasn't sure what happens after that. Hunter responded to an email I sent and helped ensure everything went through and took time to respond to additional questions as well. He was clear and made sure I understood the process fully and helped my transactions go through. I look forward to seeing how these invenstments pay off.

I appreciate the ability to be able to invest in whiskey lots. The platform to check on investments is a great tool as well. Looking forward to continuing the journey.

I first opened my Vinovest account in August of 2020 with ~$5,000 in deposits. About a month ago, I decided to add another $5,000 to my existing Vinovest account in order to expand my wine portfolio. Three weeks later, Vinovest moved the money out of my wine account and used it to buy Whiskey investments without my knowledge or consent. I had not made any investments in Whiskey prior to this and had no intention of doing so. I sent three messages to Vinovest customer support asking that this transaction be reversed but have not heard anything from the company in weeks.
I am now trying to liquidate all assets I have with Vinovest and have discovered that there is no option on their site to sell the whiskey they purchased with my money. My wine portfolio has now been listed for sale but the estimated value of the wines (in my portfolio for the past 3.5 years) somehow mysteriously dropped within an hour of listing them for sale. It remains to be seen if I will ever get any money back from this company...And wouldn't you know it, Vinovest has no posted phone number to reach out to when multiple messages are ignored.

If you haven't given your money to this predatory company yet, don't.

Great whisky cask.

All managed wine in my account was selected by Vinovest. The value of this wine was significantly below the value posted by Vinovest on my statements. I tried to sell the wine on their account (sold most of it at a significant loss). Although I've asked Vinovest to forward all cash in my account to me, they failed to do so. When I complained (via email), the value of my account went to zero (and showed no activity to bring it to zero) and no funds have been remitted to me. I've sent several emails to customer support and senior executives but have not received any responses or acknowledgements to any communication.

I’ve been investing with this company for the last couple of years and have been very happy with it. I’m up reasonably well, well diversified, and it’s an asset class I normally wouldn’t have access to.

Always looking for alternatives...whiskey barrels seems to be a reliable alternative and this company makes it very easy to invest in that asset class

If you want to sell your wine, you have to auction it off YOURSELF! And the value they say your account is well above the value people are bidding for your wine. DO NOT INVEST HERE!!!

Where do I begin?

I invested $10K 2 years ago over several installments. I'm currently down ~11%, which is very underwhelming for an investment that was supposed to be uncorrelated with the stock market. The figure with -11% unrealized loss is the supposed "market value" of my vines (whatever that means), not the value that I can sell it for. I've been trying to liquidate for 4 straight months, and the best bids I've gotten on their "marketplace" lowball by 20-30%, so I'm essentially stuck unless I'm willing to accept a 40% total loss. Not at all what I was expecting.

Secondly, and more importantly, the company's ethics are highly questionable. When I signed up, they advertised on their website that customers are never charged any fees for selling 60 days after their purchase date. They changed their terms *after* I invested. They are now charging a 1.5% selling fee and refuse to honor their original terms to me, which further increases my losses. They also promised that selling on reasonable terms would always be possible and that they personally hand-hold customers through liquidations. They even used to have a marketing punt on their website saying "your investment is liquid (pun intended)". Turns out all of that was a lie too.

I understand the business landscape changes and have a lot of sympathy for startups creating brand-new products, but there is no excuse for pulling the rug from under your users, especially your *early* users. Vinovest is an unethical company and I don't recommend anyone use their product. I will update my review if I receive any meaningful response from Vinovest.

I started to invest with Vinovest about 1.5 years ago as a mean of diversification, and based on the claim they had better performance than the S&P500. As of today, my portfolio is down 8% against the inital value in dollar. As a matter of fact, it is down 18% if you factor in the depreciation of the dollar during the same time. I invested to fight inflation and it went the opposite direction; my investment got depreciated against a highly depreciating currency. If I wanted to sell right now, by looking at the comments, I could expect to get 75% of the price displayed by Vinovest. That means if I would sell now at these conditions, I would have lost 43% of my investment, and this in a matter of 1.5 year... This is a complete fail, what else can I say. I believe Vinovest is over-paying the wines that they buy for their customers, and I believe their selection is not very good since most of the wines they selected for me lost their value. Obviously it does not make sense to sell now before the selling window, so I will wait, but the experience so far is painful.

I opened a Vinovest account over 2 years ago. A month ago I decided to take a close look at my portfolio and came to the conclusion that my positions (which were picked by VinoVest) decreased in value over the 2 years, all the while VinoVest was charging 2,5% commission. Thus, I decided to cut the losses and liquidate the positions.
Unfortunately, when one decides to liquidate, you are pretty much on your own. There is absolutely no help from the VinoVest team, even though their website claims:"When you’re ready to sell, our worldwide team will assist you in getting the maximum return on your investment." You will have to place the wines on the "market" yourself at the price that you deem right (it is very opaque where you have listed your wines, sometimes Vinovest claims that is on a marketplace they run, other times it’s the contrary, however I wasn’t able to find any listings of the wines that I have listed on any publicly available online marketplace). I chose the price that was recommended by VinoVest, as that seemed reasonable, they are the experts, even though it was mostly below the price that I paid for 2 years ago. To date (so a month later) I received offers for only 1 of the positions at a 25% discount to what VinoVest claims is the value of this holding and based on what VinoVest charges the 2,5% commission. So basically, they have cheated me twice, first as I will obviously not be able to liquidate my funds, at least not at the value that VinoVest states and second because they have been charging me commission on these very same inflated values.
Furthermore I had some positions in the so called trading portfolio, a portfolio that isn’t managed by VinoVest, has lower fees and lets a user trade (make decisions) on his/her own. This portfolio actually fared worse than the managed one, but I am no expert and was able to sell at prices similar to the ones indicated by VinoVest. However, once I have liquidated all my positions in the trading portfolio and asked for the funds to be withdrawn there have been just stalling and excuses why the transfer hasn’t been processed. First I received a form that was intended for US accounts only (Eu bank accounts do not have a routing number), when I informed CS about this they asked me to send the details via e-mail. After a week I got a confirmation that my bank account details were entered and that a transfer will follow within a week. Which didn’t happen and after following up what was the reason, they said the transfer failed because my country of residence doesn’t match with the country code of the IBAN (I have sent a Revolut IBAN which has a different country code than my address). After complaining that they should have advised this before and asking whether they would then prefer to get the account details with the same country code as my address, but which accepts EUR only, I received no reply and a week later I am still waiting.
All of the above stated is in my opinion absolutely unacceptable and makes me wonder why a company that advertises “investment” services would be stalling a payout of 1k$ and doing everything possible for me to actually lose the money I have “invested”. So, my conclusion is they might not be running a legitimate business and this might actually be a scam, otherwise they surely should be more forthcoming when their clients want to liquidate and cash out their own assets.

Vinovest is great at marketing. But they overpay when they buy your wines and their valuations are grossly inflated. For everyone leaving glowing reviews - try to sell your wines. No one will pay you Vinovest’s valuation (if you can even get an offer). You have lost money, you just don’t know it yet. And all the while Vinovest collects their monthly fees. Put your money in an S&P 500 ETF. UPDATE -- Vinovest is attempting to get this review removed if I don't identify myself, which I don't intend to do. Not a single one of my wines has sold and I get a slew of offers at 70% of the value put on the wines by Vinovest. I am going to lose a lot of money here.

I had an initial discussion with a supposed wine investing expert. I started small to see if they lived up to expectations and the investment was worth it. All my wines are losing money. Not a single good investment. I have stopped and just assume this is a lost cause. I would invest in other assets classes.

I've been a user of their platform for over 2 years now. In that time, my investments have been above the cost basis (meaning NOT losing money) about 5% of the time. Otherwise, everything's been losing money. When I went to pull the plug, you can't just get your money out. You have to put your wine up for sale on their open market, where you only get bids at about 2/3 the "value" that VV assigns it. In the meantime, they're taking advisory fees every month, whether you make money or not. They claim that wine outperforms equities...my account has done anything but. Fun amusement, but not a solid investment by any stretch.

This company is indeed a scam.
They say they buy fine wine for you, and (1) you can sell the wine at any point and (2) you can take physical possession of the wine at any time.
Both claims are absolutely material. And both claims are false.
(1) In fact, you cannot sell the wine at any time. They will only sell the wine for you in a supposed "selling window" that they themselves unilaterally determine. And if you want to sell outside of the "selling window" that they have decreed, they only let you list the wine for sale on their completely illiquid platform.
(2) In fact, you cannot get physical possession of the wine at any time. I have been repeatedly contacting them to get a quote for physical delivery of the wine. They simply ignore me entirely.
In other words, this company is attempting to defraud me of thousands and thousands of dollars of fine wine. This is obviously illegal and criminal, and they will hear from me.

PS: the scammers have now responded. Note that they do not deny, because they cannot, any of the points I make.
They cannot deny that, contrary to their lie, one cannot sell the wine on the open market at any time.
They cannot deny that they continue, obviously illegally, to prevent me from taking physical possession of my wines.
This company is a criminal scam.

I would avoid vinovest at all costs. They are not going to stick around for long. Here is why.

When you purchase wines on vinovest they buy them mostly through Liv-ex and then store them in bonded warehouses. This is a great start. They then start to con you.

What they do is provide you true valuations only on wines that list on Liv-ex, this makes sense and is accurate. For wines that do not show up on Liv-ex though they jack up the valuations in whatever way is necessary to keep your portfolio positive. I would guess that their algorithm literally increases valuations of unlisted wines based on the losses incurred by the wines with valuations.

It gets worse though. Don't even try to sell your wines. The user interface is absolute garbage and at the start was predatory. Here are the details.

- They charge a ridiculous early liquidation fee that is not clearly communicated. (likely buried in the service agreement)
- They use there own system to bid on wines. I had bids that were extremely robotic. Either someone is scraping the system or vinovest is working both sides.
- They dont sell the wines for you, or help you at all. Have fun listing wines for months and getting $100s less than you paid.