The Auswine Forum

Does anybody know if there are certain insurance companies that insure wine cellars. (i.e. the actual wine inside in an indoor underground cellar). It just struct me that what if the house were to burn down, it would either explode all the bottles, or the heat would probably ruin the wine anyway and pow - tens of 000's gone. I keep buying more wine than I drink, so the value keeps going up.
I estimate that some of the forumites cellars would be worth a small fortune. Any thoughts or advice on which way to turn?

Attached some tasting notes of recent wines I drank in the last two weeks

I ranked them in order of what I liked the best.

98 JR
98 Domaine A Cab Sav (Tassie)
94 Howard Park
98 Orlando Lawson's Shiraz
98 Zema Family Cab Sav
01 Craiglee Shiraz

All except for the Craiglee I gave a high rating and cannot wait to try all of them again in another year or so.

Although the JR was still very closed, I triple decantered and allowed to breath for a while and after it opened up, it was an astonishingly good wine. It was a wine with class and sharp flavours that mellowed and improved all night. Complex and multi-layered flavour and eventually a great fruity nose. I had that on the same night as the HP and although I paid $50 p/b for the JR and $70 for the HP, the JR was a clear winner on the night. Excellent and will improve for many, many years.

The Domaine A was a deep, powerful, earthy, oaky, brooding style of Cabernet. I could taste it in on my breath for another day after drinking it. In say 5 years, it would not surprise me if this wine improved to such an extent that it would ranked higher than the JR. It wasn't smokey, but it had that cigar box/deep dark blackberry flavour. Excellent

The Orlando still needs another 3 years to fully integrate. I found initially too hot, as that eucalypt flavour was a bit over powering and made it too spicy to enjoy the fruit. This will be a stunner in time as I think later on the fruit will really come out and provide a fantastic shiraz experience. Highly Recommended

I've had one 94 HP for the last 3 years in a row. The first was a knockout and the second not far behind. This bottle seemed a bit flat. Not a bad wine, just lacking character and perhaps not enough fruit flavour for a 10 year wine. Although definitely a quality wine, it was a tad boring and really didn't leave me thinking that I needed to go and buy more HP. No wow factor. Perhaps I am being a bit harsh as I enjoyed the first 2 so much. Highly Recommended

The 98 Zema was clearly a well structured and powerful Cabernet. Still young and will improve over the next 3-5 years, (peaking in say 2007), it did display quite complex flavours. Highly Recommended

The Craiglee was just ok. A pleasant and easy drinking young shiraz. Certainly not their best as the 2000 I have had many times before and is far better. Not much complexity to this wine, just straight fruit driven flavour without much layering. - Drink now - Recommended.

Mine's with my NRMA house contents insurance - have to fax them an updated list each year. This will not work if your wine is worth too great a percentage of total house contents. Some one I know had their insurance cancelled on the spot when they wanted wine to be 50% of their contents.

Gianna wrote::?:
Attached some tasting notes of recent wines I drank in the last two weeks

I ranked them in order of what I liked the best.

98 JR
98 Domaine A Cab Sav (Tassie)
94 Howard Park
98 Orlando Lawson's Shiraz
98 Zema Family Cab Sav
01 Craiglee Shiraz

All except for the Craiglee I gave a high rating and cannot wait to try all of them again in another year or so.

Although the JR was still very closed, I triple decantered and allowed to breath for a while and after it opened up, it was an astonishingly good wine. It was a wine with class and sharp flavours that mellowed and improved all night. Complex and multi-layered flavour and eventually a great fruity nose. I had that on the same night as the HP and although I paid $50 p/b for the JR and $70 for the HP, the JR was a clear winner on the night. Excellent and will improve for many, many years.

The Domaine A was a deep, powerful, earthy, oaky, brooding style of Cabernet. I could taste it in on my breath for another day after drinking it. In say 5 years, it would not surprise me if this wine improved to such an extent that it would ranked higher than the JR. It wasn't smokey, but it had that cigar box/deep dark blackberry flavour. Excellent

The Orlando still needs another 3 years to fully integrate. I found initially too hot, as that eucalypt flavour was a bit over powering and made it too spicy to enjoy the fruit. This will be a stunner in time as I think later on the fruit will really come out and provide a fantastic shiraz experience. Highly Recommended

I've had one 94 HP for the last 3 years in a row. The first was a knockout and the second not far behind. This bottle seemed a bit flat. Not a bad wine, just lacking character and perhaps not enough fruit flavour for a 10 year wine. Although definitely a quality wine, it was a tad boring and really didn't leave me thinking that I needed to go and buy more HP. No wow factor. Perhaps I am being a bit harsh as I enjoyed the first 2 so much. Highly Recommended

The 98 Zema was clearly a well structured and powerful Cabernet. Still young and will improve over the next 3-5 years, (peaking in say 2007), it did display quite complex flavours. Highly Recommended

The Craiglee was just ok. A pleasant and easy drinking young shiraz. Certainly not their best as the 2000 I have had many times before and is far better. Not much complexity to this wine, just straight fruit driven flavour without much layering. - Drink now - Recommended.

I've had all the wines mentioned above "Gianna" and pretty much agree with the ranking. The 94 HP has always been a goodie but over-rated for me. I've got heaps left so will crack one open soon to see how it is travelling ...

I currently insure with Suncorp in Qld. It is part of the contents but unlike DJ it is not a percentage of the policy. Currently at 110k + 45k (wine). All they ask is detailed inventory be kept on file which I just upgrade every 6 months. I did have NRMA but had to cancel because of percentage ruling. good luck


graham

graham wrote:I currently insure with Suncorp in Qld. It is part of the contents but unlike DJ it is not a percentage of the policy. Currently at 110k + 45k (wine). All they ask is detailed inventory be kept on file which I just upgrade every 6 months. I did have NRMA but had to cancel because of percentage ruling. good luck


graham

Good to know Graham, I'm also with Suncorp, and they have never shown any interest in the wine cellar, and the proportion of total sum insured is not dissimilar to yours.

I guess I'll just send them the cellar database file each year.

I have a follow on question, can anyone enlighten me on how wine i similarly insured when it is cellared in a professional storage facility?

cheers

Andrew

Wizz wrote:I have a follow on question, can anyone enlighten me on how wine i similarly insured when it is cellared in a professional storage facility?

I store my wines in a professional storage facility. You need to have insurance with the storage facility. The typical insurance companies will not insure wines stored elsewhere. The current charge is $1.60 per every $1000 dollars worth of wine per month. So a $45000 cellar will have to pay $72.00 a month insurance plus the storage fee.

Cheers
Rob

Rob wrote:[I store my wines in a professional storage facility. You need to have insurance with the storage facility. The typical insurance companies will not insure wines stored elsewhere. The current charge is $1.60 per every $1000 dollars worth of wine per month. So a $45000 cellar will have to pay $72.00 a month insurance plus the storage fee.

Rob,

I thought my insurance for off site storage was a expensive, but thats a rip off! $45,000 works out to cost about $860 a year for insurance. My contents policy is for $200K including $100K off site storage of wine and it costs me about $1500 in total.

Rob wrote:

Wizz wrote:I have a follow on question, can anyone enlighten me on how wine i similarly insured when it is cellared in a professional storage facility?

I store my wines in a professional storage facility. You need to have insurance with the storage facility. The typical insurance companies will not insure wines stored elsewhere. The current charge is $1.60 per every $1000 dollars worth of wine per month. So a $45000 cellar will have to pay $72.00 a month insurance plus the storage fee.

Cheers
Rob

That is extraordinarily expensive - about $14 per thousand per year. If my $100k of contents were charged at that, it would come to $1400, I pay about a quarter of that?

Is your storage facility insuring for something beyond whats in a normal contents policy?

I know it's a rip off and there is no point insuring that much anyway. The insurance will only pay for the broken or missing(theft) bottles. If there is a fire and none of the bottles are broken, but are heat affected then that's your bad luck.

I only insure minimal amount.

Cheers
Rob