Vinovest: Bottle your wealth

Awful experience. From the get go, app does not work well, logs you out every time. Fees are so high that any gains you see are used to cover them. I finally listed my wine for sale. Wine was put in pending sale status in February. Two and a half months later no update, no money. Customer service can’t give any timeline, just a copy and paste response. Customer service has no telephone number. TAKE YOUR INVESTMENTS ELSEWHERE.

I understand wine is long term and values fluctuate. However closing the account seems impossible. They charge fees originally from a cash balance and then charge an overdraft fee without warning that you need to add to the cash before charging it. No way to pause while you sell. Predatory way of charging and do not have customer in mind. Good way to lose a few thousand.

I started investing in high-end wines using VinoVest and so far my return is a lot better than my 401K. I like that I don’t have to store the wine myself and risk bottle shock (or bottle consumption).

I ask to close account nothing in they took 160 dollars I’m glad it was just a small amount and you cannot get ahold of anyone

Hello. I just downloaded the Vinovest app (version 1.37.0) on an iPhone running iOS 17.4. The app is crashing 100% of the time after I select the “Transactions” option under wine. I posted this using my @RandomiOSBugs Twitter account. Please investigate if you can, makes it very hard for new users to browse the app.

Save yourself a headache and don’t use them. You will absolutely loose your money. Wines are inherently a long-term bet, and I’m not sure Vinovest will be around for that long (judging by the public reviews here and elsewhere, things aren’t going great for them). Even if you do manage to invest in a winner, their marketplace has poor liquidity. Nothing ever sells at the “market” price. You have to accept a lowball offer if you want to sell anything at all.

It’s easy to buy wine using this app! It’s nearly impossible to sell wine here, or get your bottles shipped to you! Terrible to non-existent liquidity. Huge bid/ask spreads. Intractably awful customer service. You can buy wines here, in theory. But you can’t sell them, not really. Do you like taking a 20% haircut on wines you’ve owned for 6 months? Do you like listing wines bought on the same platform, recommended by the platform, that receive ZERO bids when listed for sale? If so, enjoy Vinovest. When asked to have the wines shipped to you, you get an excuse about the “extensive preparation” that will take 9 - 12 weeks at a minimum. To ship seven (7) bottles of wine worth $1,000. In my opinion, this operation has all the appearances of a Ponzi scheme. Avoid at all costs.

I appreciate the democratization of wine and whiskey investing. But the inability to transfer money out without contacting customer service is a big red flag. Feels like Hotel California. You can check in but you can’t check out (or it is very hard to).

Cool concept, but in reality their fees eat up any actual returns. Had my money invested for 3 years and ended up in the red. Be wary of their very bold claims about 10%+ returns, but that was definitely not my experience with their managed accounts

I spent half a year with Vinovest and the experience has not been great. Performance has been miserable (negative returns), month fees are unreasonably high, and when I try to liquidate my holdings there’s not only liquidity issues causing unimaginable attritions but also early liquidation fees. There are far better options out there.