Yule Georgieva: Welcome to Chats from the Wine Cellar, the official inventory podcast. I am Yula Georgieva, and this week we are returning with a trade secrets episode. So last time we did trade secrets, we had Charles Curtis talking about wine auctions. Charles was the former head of auctions at Christie's. This week, we are turning to wine as an investment, but we do have another MW in the hot seat, Adam LaPierre, Adam LaPierre.

Adam Lapierre: Hey, thanks, Yule, happy to be here.

Yule Georgieva: We're excited to do this because wine investment is a pretty topical thing right now, and we're excited to learn everything you have to share. So I used to do intros on our guests, but I'm gonna turn it right over to you. Tell us a little bit about yourself, how you came into the world of wine, got that MW next to your name, and also tell us a little bit about Vint, the investment company that you work for.

Adam Lapierre: Yeah, happy to. Basically, I've worked in the wine business my entire adult life. I started working for a winery in upstate New York in the Fayette River Lakes region over 20 years ago and didn't know much about wine, but was very interested. The winery was very commercially successful, but I wouldn't say it considered the top tier of quality. But what really ignited my interest and passion was the winemaker there, who was just so knowledgeable and generous with his time. I had spent a lot of time working in the cellar, in the vineyards, and out in the market. And it really just opened up how, sort of how broad the world of wine is and how it touches so many different areas of life. So from there, I was out in the market trying to sell these wines. Again, not the best quality, but when you're speaking to Psalms and buyers, found it sort of necessary to understand the world of wine so I could put these things, these wines in context. So I started tasting more broadly and started the WSET program. Didn't have the ambition of becoming a master of wine, but just started doing the certificates and with each subsequent milestone wanted to tackle the next challenge. So my time at this winery, I obtained my WSET diploma. And at that point for me to set my sights on the NW. At that point in time, I decided I needed to make a job change so that I was working with the types of wines that I would need to really understand in order to pass the NW. So I worked for an importer called Frederick Wildman and Sons, which represents 50 different estates, family owned estates from around the world. So I got to work with some fantastic producers. Um, and we went through the MW program, which is a roller coaster process. Uh, it took me about six years to, from start to finish to attain the MW. Um, gets to this point where you're, um, you know, you've invested so much time, energy and money that you just can't turn back. So I powered through and got the FW, which was a great achievement of 20, 2013. Huge relief. And then after that, I went to the other side of the table. So as opposed to working on the supplier side, went to working in buying roles. I worked for a company called Lidl, which is one of the largest retailers in the world. I ran a company called Minfolio, which is focused on collectible fine wine. So the, you know, the, the really, uh, most important wines, uh, from an investment and collectible perspective, uh, working with consumers and most recently joined the team here at Vint, which, um, we've got two businesses. One is the main business is focused on wines and spirits as an investment. So we're a company that enables and facilitates fractional investment in the most interesting and coveted investment grade wines and spirits. And then we also have a marketplace where we sell the world's greatest wines and spirits direct to consumer.

Yule Georgieva: Now I have to ask you, when you did the MW, did you meet Charles? Do you know Charles?

Adam Lapierre: I do know Charles. Yes. I first met him as a student. I, when I was, I've traveled to New York a number of times and he was volunteering, leading some pasting sessions, so I got to engage with him in that regard. He would present at different seminars and then spend some time with him since becoming an MW, working on educational programs. So in essence, the MW educational program is all run by Masters of Wine, who have subsequently are volunteering their time and helping the next, you know, the next group of students climb the mountains. So we've spent a lot of time together at various seminars.

Yule Georgieva: Well, we'll be sending him this episode too. I think this will be great that we have these next to each other at the Traits and Kids episodes. So turning back to Zint and wine as an investment, you mentioned fractional ownership. Maybe just explain what that means.

Adam Lapierre: In 2012, this is really specific to the US market, but certain rules were passed that enabled crowdfunding into crowdfunding for entities, basically for startups. And this rule enabled companies to securitize and facilitate fractional investment in many different categories of asset classes. Vint is the only company that's really doing this, this type of process oriented towards fine wines and spirits. And in essence, what we do is we identify and source the greatest assets that we think have strong potential as investments. We securitize these so we create individual LLCs they're called series LLCs so basically a mini company role is to own and hold these assets. And then we qualify these offerings with the SEC, and that enables us to present these investment opportunities to individuals. And individuals can basically purchase shares in this series LLC and, by proxy, the assets that the LLC is holding. So as an example, we purchase and securitize a lot of DRC, but we might purchase a case of Romani Conti, a free pack of Romani Conti with a market value of $120,000, $100,000, whatever it may be. We qualify this for the SEC, and then we can present this investment opportunity on our platform and folks can purchase as little as one share of this case of wine for $100. So get exposure to the top assets, but in a way that's quite capital efficient.

Yule Georgieva: So fascinating. And as you said, I don't think there's anyone else out there doing it. So very novel model.

Adam Lapierre: Yeah. I think, you know, the founders of the company saw wine investing in the traditional sense of buying and holding these wines as a model that could be improved upon or, or, or at least change in a way to, um, bringing this asset class to a broader group of potential consumers. And, you know, when you think about, um, about efficient diversification and an asset class, you really wouldn't want, most people wouldn't want to allocate more than 5% of the total pool that they're going to invest in this category to a single asset. So if you're thinking about that example of DRC at $100,000 a case, there's very few people that would have a collection or an investment allocation towards wines and spirits large enough to have that make sense in a way that gives them that diversification. So it's a pretty clever approach to wines and spirit investing.

Yule Georgieva: So now let's talk about wine as an asset class. It has gained traction, I think, in recent years as becoming a financial asset as opposed to just something that we all love and drink. So can you give us a sense of why that is? Why is it that wine has become seen as a financial asset and what makes it a worthwhile financial asset? Yeah, absolutely.

Adam Lapierre: I think the idea of investing in wine is more widespread in Europe or has traditionally been more widespread in Europe and in particular in the UK where you've had this very strong global wine trade. And I think the old approach of somebody that's a collector buying two cases of a wine on release, reselling one in a number of years time when the price goes up and using that profit from that sale to pay for the other case that they're going to drink was sort of a normal approach that that folks would take. In the US it's always, I think until just very recently, folks have just been very focused on consumption, wine for consumption. So even collectors that I have worked with that might have 20 or 30,000 bottles tended to have a very different view towards their collection, really not thinking of it in any way as an asset, but more as a passion project. And most collectors that I've engaged with wouldn't dream of selling any of their wines unless they, you know, until they reach the point where they realize they're just never going to come close to drinking all their holdings and reality starts to set in. But otherwise, yeah, I feel like at least collectors that I've engaged with in the U.S. have a strong emotional attachment to collecting. As I think as the next generations of consumers are getting interested in wine, there is a bit of a, a bit less of an emotional attachment. So I think that younger collectors are kind of thinking at it, thinking about wine and spirits in, through both lenses, basically one as an asset class a product to enjoy and consume. And then I think the track record that Wine and Spirits have shown in particular recently has been pretty dynamic and that's probably gotten the attention of a lot of folks. What's very interesting from our perspective is if you go back more than a hundred years, Cambridge did a study over 120 years and looked at the performance of wine as an investment. And on average, it delivered 8% returns, above 8% returns over that 120 year period. So certainly we've got, we have had sort of explosive growth in the most recent number of years, but it does have a long track record of performance. And then the other advantage is that it's typically not correlated with other asset classes. So when stocks or bonds move in value, wine tends to be reasonably stable.

Yule Georgieva: So looking at the two major economic crises you've had in the last 20 years, the global financial crisis in 2008 to 10, and then most recently COVID, did you notice that, that the volatility and the performance of wine stayed fairly constant?

Adam Lapierre: Yes, it definitely, it doesn't, there is a very low correlation. So where during the economic crisis that you've mentioned, the movement of wine prices was, that there was a dip, but it was significantly less than what you would see in other equities. And with COVID, obviously the opposite happened where folks were sitting at home and had a lot of disposable income. So that was actually a catalyst for significantly increased consumption and price appreciation within the category.

Yule Georgieva: Yeah, let's not talk about inflation. That's just too depressing for us. I'll leave that off the table for a moment. Well, one other attribute that I think is so interesting about wine is that it's a, it's the supply of wine of a particular given wine can only go down, right? There's only so much 1982 Mouton or 85 Sassicaia or something. So do you find that for older wines, those tend to be the more successful investments just given that the quantities are always depleting?

Adam Lapierre: That's one of the great things about wine as an acid class is obviously it is a, that's a consumable good. Um, and so supply drops over time. Um, and, um, and it improves the quality over time as well. So I think that can definitely increase the desirability and as the supply decreases, obviously the competition to acquire those, those, um, those products for us. Uh, and the other thing that's interesting about wine is it's a relatively illiquid market. And so the way that price moves tends to be in more of a step change function. We see that happening at different age periods for different wines. We typically see price movement within the first number of years of release. And then to your point, as wines really start to enter their drinking window and get consumed and supply starts to decline a bit more rapidly, then we see the price moving there. So we sort of look at those two, you know, those two ends of the spectrum is when we are looking to source and or exit at this.

Yule Georgieva: So one other thing you just mentioned that I think is important is the liquidity or the illiquidity of the market. So for somebody who wants to unwind their position or sell things off, how does that work through Vint and how does that work in general?

Adam Lapierre: So with Vint, we manage the process from end to end. So the investor in a collection only needs to allocate to however many shares they want in an individual collection. Vint handles the storage, we handle the insurance, and we handle the exit. So there's no liquidity in the interim, but we see that as an advantage because we've again the traditional approach if you're going to invest in wine you need to basically can run the process from it and this is a much more turnkey approach. In terms of exiting we monitor the market, we monitor multiple markets, so we're looking at the European markets, we're looking in the US, tracking price movement and ultimately looking for opportunistic exits in multiple markets with the objective of yielding the greatest return obviously. Because of the illiquid nature of the market we can often realize returns that are even higher than what we would expect sometimes because again there's this scarcity factor with some of the things that we're trading in. We might sell wines or spirits back to our merchant network in the UK or in France. And we also have this platform in the US, again, a marketplace. And the objective there is to increase our exits through that channel as a way to maximize returns for investors.

Yule Georgieva: Now, this might be a real trade secrets question. So if you can't answer it, don't, but from where do you supply your wine? So if you're buying and selling back to merchants, do you also buy from merchants or from Chateau, where are you getting it?

Adam Lapierre: Yeah, we do. We buy from, we have a pretty tight network of trusted suppliers, but we work with merchants in the UK, in Mainland Europe, both in France and other European countries. We source from negotiants, we source from producers. And we also source spirits at auction. We don't source wine at auction at the moment because for us, we want wines that are in their original cases. We want wines that have been professionally stored since release. And so, you know, very concerned about provenance and storage for wine. Certainly concerned about provenance and authenticity for spirits, but we are more flexible in terms of how we would source those. And the secondary market is really driven by the auction houses as it relates to spirits. So those are our main channels.

Yule Georgieva: Well, if you ever need intel on how certain wines have been stored, if they've ever come from anyone in inventory, you know, we have that record of what's in their collection.

Adam Lapierre:Yep. Excellent.

Yule Georgieva: So talking about investable wines themselves, what is it that defines an investable wine? What makes a wine investment grade?

Adam Lapierre: Yeah, I think one of the things that we like to say is not all wine is fine wine and not all fine wine is investment grade. So I think people that approach the idea of investing in wine or collecting wine sometimes initially have this idea that if a wine can improve with age that it will also go up in value. There's actually a pretty small number of wines that have a track record of increasing in value over time. And that tends to be our focus. So we tend to really look at the main fine wine categories of Europe, Bordeaux, Burgundy, Champagne, Cuscany, Piedmont, and then a little bit from Spain, a little bit from Germany, a little bit from the road. And then emerging regions like Napa, certain producers from South America, producers from Australia. Um, but our focus is pretty, pretty narrow because we want to. Identify and focus on assets that have a track record of performance, um, or. And, or robust consumer demand, right? We, we think again, this, the, the illiquidity sometimes with producers that don't have a long track record can be, can really deceive you around what the potential is for future appreciation. So we tend to take a pretty conservative approach when we're defining those, what is an investment grade wine, we're skew it. So that being said, even though our main focus tends to be these typical, these traditional fine wine regions and the producers that you might expect from those regions. We do also focus on what we call emerging regions or producers where we really see the trends moving in the right direction in terms of consumer awareness. And we see these wines punching above their weight from a quality to price ratio. Again, for us, that's a smaller slice of what we offer. And we try to really communicate the thesis around those wines in a very clear way. So folks know, okay, well, this is a, again, just like if you're buying a stock, an emerging, a stock from an emerging industry, the upside might be potentially larger, but there's also potentially more inherent risk there.

Yule Georgieva: So how many producers in each region would you say would fall into this category? Let's just take a region like Bordeaux or Burgundy. Obviously, there will probably be more who fall in the investment category. But how many would you say is it just the first gross and the ground crews or does it disperse down?

Adam Lapierre: Yeah, I think, again, for us, our focus is going to be the first growths, the GCCs, the Grand Cru Class A and their right bank equivalents. Even within the GCCs, we're looking at a subset of those. So, again, one of the things that we really think about is where is the consumer demand and where is the awareness of these brands. Lynch Bage or Honté Canet has very robust markets for these wines and they're just known by consumers and in demand. So those would be kind of the core focal points. And then we're also looking at producers that might have, that might be sort of undergoing some changes both at the winery or around ownership or winemaking and looking at some of those catalysts for potential price appreciation. So, you know, Trolamundo or Armao Brion are a couple of producers that have been on the rise recently so we're kind of watching those that are on the upswing and trying to take advantage of those opportunities as well. But, you know, in terms of the number, I would say in Bordeaux, you know, for us it's maybe 30 to 35 producers. In Burgundy, it's probably 10 or 12. Um, uh, it's a pretty small number, I think, when you, when you, uh, get right down to it.

Yule Georgieva: And I suspect even smaller when you get into Piedmont and Tuscany and Germany. Yeah, absolutely.

Adam Lapierre: In Germany, I mean, for us, it would be Keller and Egon Mueller probably would be our main focal point. It's in Piedmont, a handful of producers. And in Tuscany, I guess we're a bit more liberal there because of, one, the way that we see the price movement of Tuscan wines tends to be earlier in the cycle. So they tend to appreciate more within the first five or six years of release. And it's a pretty significant category for us in the US, so the US being our preferred exit channel, we can take advantage of increased consumer awareness. And we also look to capitalize on arbitrage opportunities across these markets as well. So, the other thing that's interesting about wine is it's a very inefficient market. So, where we have confidence in the demand for a category and we see arbitrage opportunities and sourcing from Europe and potentially reselling in the US That might be something we would look at and consider Consider a broader base of wines in that in that regard So how many lots would you have on Vinta given time and how many wines in the marketplace? Yeah, the marketplace actually includes includes a lot of the assets that we've That we've sourced for Vint, and it also includes wines and spirits from different sources of supply that we know and trust. So, we've got over 10,000 individual products on our marketplace on there right now. The most expensive offering that we have right now is a bottle of McAllen Red Collection 78-year-old scotch for $162,500. We've also got a bottle of 2009 La Musonnie that's available for just over $100k. We run the gamut from about $300 a case up to six figures. Yeah, and then around as it relates to the fit, we tend to offer collections sequentially. So we might have two or three different collections that are available for investment at any given time. We've done about 80 collections since our inception. First collection was offered in 2021. And we've also got a slightly different product that is available for accredited investors that's a fairly new offering for us. And basically the idea behind these collections is they're very curated and focused. So there is a theme behind it. That could be Bordeaux. It could be a specific producer. So for example, recently we did an O'Brien offering that was O'Brien and La Mission, O'Brien offering that was 18, 19 and 20 from both of those producers. We've done others that are focused on value producers from the left bank or the right bank, or it could be early, you know, recent releases from Champagne. So there tends to be some idea behind what that, how that collection is built and constructed. Each has its own investment thesis. So folks can understand what's the historical performance of the category. Why do we, why did we put this collection together in the way that we did? And why do we think it's an interesting investment? So it enables people to build their own diversified portfolio over time through this sequence of offerings. With the accredited product, the idea is folks that want to deploy larger amounts of capital in one go and get instant diversification can work with us and invest in these. Right. It's called a reg D offering. Um, and that we basically constructed in such a way to give them exposure across different categories. What would be the typical hold that you'd anticipate?

Yule Georgieva: Cause you mentioned that you're always looking for exit opportunities, right? To, to generate the high downturn, but what, what do you anticipate for most of these lots?

Adam Lapierre: Yeah. So we guide to between one and seven years for a hold period, we view it as a medium-term investment. So I think three to five is going to be where the average hold sort of ends up, although we've made a number of exits already. Again, just looking at looking opportunistically where we can. We've exited six different, across six different collections thus far. And yeah, those have really been based on market opportunities that present themselves and again, sort of the nature of the step change function and change in price is you can't exactly totally predict when that's going to happen, but when it happens, we want to pounce.

Yule Georgieva: Let's talk now about bridging, collecting and investing, investing, because you spoke about this already a little bit. And as you know, most of our listeners are collectors. So how much does it help to actually understand wine and know the regions and know the producers as opposed to somebody who's more financially minded? Because we've spoken before and you've mentioned that most of your investors are actually just financial people. They're not collectors, right?

Adam Lapierre: I think, yeah, there can be a, uh, I think you need a bit of both if you're really looking at it as, as, as an investment. Um, I think if you're passionate about a region and the producers within that region, you will get exposure to the producers that are ultimately going to be, um, interesting potential investments. Um, but I think if you're, if your focus is on investment, being a bit more cold and calculated in terms of focusing on data and sort of detaching yourself from the passion can be very useful. So that category is useful, but I try to take a much more sort of cold approach when I'm thinking about it for, when we're thinking about it for investment and really focus on data, focus on historical performance and brand strength. So yeah, I think just sort of having clarity around what your objectives are and sort of creating that separation between what you're doing for passion and what you're doing for investment or expecting a return from is useful just to ensure that you meet your goals and that you're ultimately satisfied with the outcome. investing in wine, especially if you're investing as a collector is that you've got some, you'll have some great things to drink at the end of the day if it doesn't work out.

Yule Georgieva: Now, speaking about what you just mentioned, that you are a master of wine, so you can recall all this knowledge about the different, if I asked you what are the main investment lines you thought of Bordeaux, you'd know them off the bat. For somebody who's a bit newer or is just an investor and purely financially focused, do you offer analyst reports or something like that, that give them that information that they need to make those assessments?

Adam Lapierre: We do. We provide for every collection that we offer, we develop a detailed thesis, which outlines the investment rationale for those collections. And that's for that individual collection. We also provide data around the historical performance, both of those individual assets when we have that. Some of the products that we offer might be brand new release, so you don't have any history. But we also provide other historical performance that we think is going to be relevant for investors. So we try to provide as much data as possible. And then we also really focus in on key points for each of the collections. So we think about the quantitative pieces as much as we can, but there is also a qualitative element that we think about, right? So again, what is, how is a brand trending in the market? critics around a vintage or a particular producer and try to really bring as much color as possible to tell the light when folks are considering investing in these collections. I think that could be useful, again, just sort of for folks to orient themselves around the most important regions and at least what we consider to be the most important producers. quarterly reports where we provide commentary and data around what's happening in the market.

Yule Georgieva: You find critics scores make a material difference or increase prices if they get high scores over time?

Adam Lapierre: Yes, without a doubt they do. It may not have an immediate impact on a brand or, but I think you, if you find a brand that is, um, highly regarded and collectible and has a track record of consistently producing high quality, um, you know, the, the, the critic scores that sort of, uh, validate that over time have an impact because it increases, uh, in general, uh, of awareness of the trade and the consumer, which influences demand. And then if you look at individual wines within a producer's portfolio over a period of years and you compare the wines that might have a hundred points versus wines that get 97, you know, there's no doubt an impact in price.

Yule Georgieva: So some producers get pretty fired up about wine as an investment. I'm sure you know this, but why do you think that is? And, and, and what, how do you respond to that?

Adam Lapierre: Well, producers mostly are making wines because they are passionate about, um, their land. They're passionate about their product. They want people to enjoy and to enjoy their product and consume their product. So I think the idea of speculating on it, um, just might feel contrary to their goals as somebody who's pouring their blood, sweat, and tears into making these fantastic wines. From our side, I think we view ourselves as caretakers of these products until they're ready to drink. The realities of the market is that nobody wants to hold these wines, or that the producers don't want to hold these wines until they're ready to consume, right? They just can't because the cashflow, the realities of the business are just too challenging. Their intermediaries similarly don't want to hold and sell these wines until they're ready to drink. So there is a value that we are providing by maintaining these wines in professional storage and caring for them until they're ready to consume. And I think that's better than putting them in somebody's wine fridge, right? And then those wines are going to be put on auction and maybe that wine fridge breaks down for a few months in the summer, right? And then nobody knows it, right? The idea that we view ourselves as providing value and clarity in terms of provenance and ultimately want to put these wines in the hands of consumers at the end of the day, which is one of the reasons that we've launched this marketplace is, so I definitely understand some of the hesitation, but I think we're doing it a bit differently.

Yule Georgieva: Now let's turn to some trends in wine. What are some trends that you're observing in wine as an investment right now?

Adam Lapierre: Well, I think what's interesting is, um, some of the price appreciation that we've seen among certain categories is, is having a, an interesting impact across other categories. So as an example, we are very interested in Bordeaux as a region right now. Again, many people wouldn't be surprised by thinking of Bordeaux as an investment, but it has really, Burgundy has had a lot of the spotlight recently and the pricing of many burgundies has accelerated quite significantly. And the same has happened in other regions, like Tuscany has been on fire as well over the last number of years. The reason I think that has created value opportunities in Bordeaux, so Bordeaux by comparison now there are certain producers that are inexpensive or great values from price, equality price perspective that maybe weren't considered or viewed as such a few years ago. So for us, we're really interested in kind of refocusing on Bordeaux for the relative value proposition that it provides. Also very interested in specific vintages, how those the prices of those wines compare to the most recent on-premier releases. We see a lot of value in 18, 19, and 20 Bordeaux. And the market availability of wines, top wines from many regions is just more limited than it ever has been. I think part of that is due to increased consumer demand, but also just trends with weather cycles has really created unpredictability and caused production levels in general to decline across a lot of these regions. So I feel like we've got some structural supply imbalances here that will be favorable for price movement in the future.

Yule Georgieva: Now let's go through what's happened with those main regions over the last, let's take 10-15 years. What happened with Burgundy? What happened with Bordeaux? What happened with Italy? What happened with Champagne? Can you give us just a little snapshot? And what happened with Napa? Like, let's go through the main regions and give us a sense of what's happened with those ones.

Adam Lapierre: with Bordeaux, the Top Chateau have just become increasingly well capitalized, which has given them the tools to produce wines that, to produce very good wines, even in challenging vintages. Obviously, we have these trends of warming, of warmer vintages that I think are kind of considered high quality recently, but then they've also just got fantastic tools and they've also got the ability to implement different protocols to make very good wines, even in challenging vintages. As they become more well capitalized, I think the pressure to sell these wines earlier has decreased. So, we're seeing less wines being released as futures, more wines being held back for library releases in the future, generally kind of cleaning up the market as a whole. And I think that kind of bodes well for price movement as well. You have less wine sort of sitting out there at retail at lower prices, maybe in retailers that aren't necessarily positioned well to sell these wines, and that should, or cleaner market will probably facilitate price movement faster. In Burgundy, just an incredible increase in consumer awareness and demand across many of the kind of major wine consuming countries. I think many of the Asian markets have increased focus on Burgundy as well as, you know, continued development in the US and there's just tiny amounts of wine being made. So you just got an intense focus and interest on very small volumes that are being produced which is causing prices to go through the roof. Producers I think are starting to catch on a bit around you know what their wines are commanding in the secondary market and I think I'm seeing some trends where folks are just getting more judicious about allocations and smarter about allocations, which I think is a good thing. You know, producers should, um, they're not, I don't think they're greedy, but I think, um, I think a more rational approach to their release prices will, um, probably, uh, you know, uh, restrict the, um, the incentive or limit the incentive to immediately go out and resell these wines on the secondary market. So, you know, and producers should capture more value, I think, to the extent that that's possible. Champagne and Tuscany, I think, have both grown very strongly over the last number of years. value proposition when you consider those wines versus Burgundy and Bordeaux. The Trump tariffs had a big impact on those categories in the US market in particular because they were not impacted. So there's a lot more consumer demand in the US on those wines. But I think folks are, the rising prices of Burgundy in particular and Bordeaux has just caused these other categories to increase in visibility and demand.

Yule Georgieva: Interesting. Now, are there any regions that you think are ones to watch from an investment perspective?

Adam Lapierre: We like South America, just some of the top wines in South America, like, then, uh, um, Chabal de Andes, Cluopauta. Um, we liked them one because from a quality to price perspective, they're, you know, they punch way above their weight. Um, and the association with, um, with producers that have global reach, I think is also very helpful. So a lot of the top Chateau in Bordeaux have these joint ventures or outright ownership of properties in South America. And so they're leveraging one there, the cache that they possess for their own brands to marketing these wines, but they're also leveraging their global distribution network to build awareness. I think those are really some exciting ones for sure.

Yule Georgieva: And delicious.‍

Adam Lapierre: Yes, indeed.

Yule Georgieva: So what's next for Vint? What do you see as your big milestones over the next 12 months?

Adam Lapierre: Yeah, so for us, we've launched this marketplace a few weeks ago and that's gaining traction. We're really excited about that. We think that it's, well, at least in looking at our assortment versus what else is on the market, we think we've got one of the most compelling assortments of collectible fine wines and spirits in the U.S. for sure. So really excited to see the great response we've been getting on that so far. For us, the collections will continue to be a focus, but reaching accredited investors and institutions is also very important for us through these diversified offerings. And then we are also exploring ways in which we can work with producers and solve problems that producers face. Again, our CEO Nick talks about this duration mismatch in the wine space where again producers are can be very cash flow constrained in certain periods of the year and kind of thinking about how we can solve these problems through different funding opportunities. So yeah we see ourselves as you know very focused on wine and spirits as an asset class but also problem solvers within the industry and looking at really create this suite of services that touches all parts of the supply chain.

Adam Lapierre: Interesting.

Yule Georgieva: Well, I hope that goes well. That sounds like a great initiative. I like what you said about your company being both caretakers, but then also being actively involved in helping suppliers and producers solve these issues. So, nice that you managed to bridge those two, and I'm sure that makes your MW heart happy as you're able to use those skills you've developed.

Adam Lapierre: Yeah, it does. I think there can be... The industry is so interesting and, in many ways, very traditional. There can be a tendency to accept things the way that things are because that's the way they've always been done. And I think we're trying to take a fresh approach sort of from end to end with how we're going to market, but also really looking at some of these problems and pain points that producers are feeling and seeing if we can find some solutions that are a win-win.

Yule Georgieva: I was hoping one of the things you were going to say about a Vint milestone is Vint Canada, since you know, we're up here. So we're a little bit spoiled, but you can be posted when that happens. Yeah.

Adam Lapierre: Yeah. The tariffs are a little bit painful these days, but we'll have to talk to Trudeau and see if we can sort something out.

Yule Georgieva: Awesome. Well, Adam, thank you so much. This has been a wonderful episode. If people want to learn more about Vint or connect with you, how can they do that?

Adam Lapierre: Our investment platform is www.vint.co. And then we've also got this marketplace, which is vintmarketplace.com. Loads of information on both platforms about the company, how we operate it. One of our key focal points is transparency. So providing as much information as possible on how we operate and, and, um, it, it, it, in giving folks, um, confidence in, in, uh, you know, how, how we go to market is, is really important to us.

Yule Georgieva: Thank you again so much for joining us to all of our listeners and viewers. Thank you for tuning in and please don't forget to subscribe and, uh, leave a review and any feedback on episodes you'd like to hear more about and to learn more about inventory or start managing your collection, go to inventory.com and of course go to Vint.co. I got that right, right? Vint.com.

Adam Lapierre: You got it. Yep.

Yule Georgieva: Perfect. Then go check out what Adam is doing over there and we'll look forward to seeing you next week. Thanks again, Adam. Thanks, you lot.