Wine has provided some fantastic returns for investors over the last couple of years, and has out performed the stock market for three decades giving investors a return of up to 30%! But there are some things you should know before you consider before investing in wine.

1) Make sure you go with a company that can offer free advice and has good understanding of the market, the most important thing when building a wine portfolio is spread the investment across different wines any company that is not able to give free advice would probably be best to avoid.

2) Make sure they offer free storage in bonded warehouses, any good wine merchant offering wine as an investment should offer free storage included in the price for the duration of your planned investment (usually 5 years max) any company that wishes to charge you extra for this service is short changing you on your investment.

3) Keep your portfolio within the Bordeaux wines if you are not an expert as this is where 90% of the investment market gravitates towards, anything outside of this could leave you open to unnecessary risk.

4) Make sure that the company that arranges and stores the wine for you allows you to visit the bonded warehouses to see your wine in person, any company that does not allow you to do this I would avoid.

5) Make sure the company arraigning the investment has the ownership of the wine in your name rather than being like a fund, this way it gives you the security of owning a tangible assets and insulates you from any financial troubles they may have as an organisation.

6) Make sure you have an exit strategy, although you can sell your wine at any time it usually best not to hold onto it any longer than 5 years, make sure you know when you are going to cash in and plan accordingly.