From Piaffe To Carafe

How I got started in fine wine and whisky

May 25, 2024

Welcome! 👋

I didn’t come from wealth.

My family weren’t obsessed with expensive cars, brands or fancy stuff.

I can't ever recall thinking, “I need to make money” while I was growing up.

My goal was to work with horses.

When I got home from school, I didn’t want to go to parties like the other kids – I just wanted to go straight to the stables and work on my craft.

I kept to myself.

It wasn’t until I got really good at riding that I started riding expensive horses – performance horses for dressage. Horses that go for hundreds of thousands of pounds, sometimes a lot more.

Successful businessmen and women pulled up to the stables in flashy cars, and one of them headhunted me to be a bloodstock broker.

He had multiple homes, luxury cars including Ferraris and Lamborghinis – stuff I’d seen only in magazines up to that point. He wore the finest clothing and clearly enjoyed life on a level I’d never experienced.

Life began to radically shift.

My new boss started flying me all over Europe to ride some of the world’s finest horses and render an opinion on whether they were any good or not.

Along the way, he also introduced me to the idea of fine wine and whisky portfolios and shared snippets of stories that captured my imagination.

Horses, cars, and houses are great, but fine wine and whisky are in a league of their own.

It’s the only luxury asset on the planet you consume.

That makes it inherently valuable.

Fast forward to 2015.

That's when I got the idea to start Oeno and to build a worldclass company centred on sharing fine wine, whisky and everything that goes with both to consumers who would otherwise never have the opportunity to enjoy those things.

The market was very dated back then. It was very much an old boy’s club for the elite only. There was a lot of snobbery and that didn’t sit well with me.

Most companies weren’t doing it right.

They were either a wine or whisky merchant targeting a certain demographic. No one was targeting the entire world of wine and whisky.

I wanted us to be the new guys on the block.

I wanted to shake things up.

So we did.

Still do, in fact.

Oeno is the only company on the planet offering a fully in-house service for our clients.

No matter what the background, no matter how much or how little you buy, no matter how much you know or don’t know, everyone can be a part of it.

Sometimes, I have to pinch myself to see that we’ve built the first of its kind global wine and whisky merchant where buyers and sellers can work together from around the world.

Just recently, for example, we helped a collector in the UK sell to a buyer in Australia. And another in America purchased from a seller in Portugal.

I get asked often: what does OENO do differently?

A lot.

We are the only wine and whisky merchant in the world with multiple exit strategies under the same roof including direct access to buyers from Michelin restaurants like the Ritz and trade experts from all over the world.
We’ve built the first of its kind dedicated in-house trade arm which means our customers can access vineyards that nobody else can.
We have a physical shop that can sell client stock from anywhere in the world.
We developed one of the world’s dedicated internal anti-fraud experts.
Every bottle is fully insured and stored in perfectly suited conditions.
We have had 3 Masters of Wine on our team.
Our management fees are exit based, which means we’re aligned from day one with your interests.

To be clear, I don’t tell you any of this to brag.

That's not my style.

I simply want you to know who you’re working with if you become a client and why you’ve made the right decision if you’re already on board.

Which brings me to today’s offering.

One of the most exciting things about collecting fine wine is that you can get started for as little as £1,000.

We have just received an allocation of Chateau Figeac 2021.

It ticks all the boxes... from a legendary vineyard, super high demand from restaurants and collectors alike and outstanding potential if you’d like to drink it now or sell it on later.

Previous releases have done very well as you can see here: