Vint Review 2022 - Great Returns & Diversification Benefits
- By Zachary Greene
- |
- Updated on September 19th, 2022
Vint is one of the best ways to invest in wine currently with low fees, good historic returns, and overall is one of the best ways retail investors can gain exposure to alternative asset classes like wine. Vint makes it incredibly easy to invest in wine and takes out all the hard work involved in it — for a small fee of course.
| 💰 Fees & Pricing | Relatively Low |
| 💵 Overall Return | Above-Average |
| 💻 Platform | Very Basic |
| 🥇 Best For | Diversifcation |
Of course while we think Vint is one of the best ways to invest in Wine and gain exposure to the wine market it’s not the only way — we’d also suggest checking out Vinovest which is similar to Vint — both are competitive with one another, but you may prefer one over the other depending on their different features.
Personally we use both platforms and are happy with both, however we have a little bit more invested with Vinovest compared to Vint — however we continue to add capital to both platforms as they’ve both provided good returns.
With that being said we think it’s important to stress that Wine investing, investing in platforms like Vint, generally should NOT be someone’s primary way of investing — it’s good to gain exposure to the industry and as a way to diversify your portfolio into alternative assets, however generally it’s best to have more liquid and cash-flowing assets in your portfolio than alternative assets.
Vint Unique Features:
Vint is one of the only Wine Investing Platforms currently making it already quite unique, however there are some features Vint has that makes it stand out as different and potentially better, for some people, compared to other wine investing platforms.
Keep in mind others wine investing platforms like Vinovest have different unique features that you may prefer, so we’d recommend checking them both out or our comparison of Vint vs Vinovest before making a decision on which to invest with — personally we invest in both platforms, but we prefer Vinovest slightly as the features that Vint have aren’t really important to us, although many people would find them extremely important.
Fixed-Fee Pricing Structure
We’ll get into the fees in detail more below, but essentially Vint is the only platform that charges a one time fixed fee — every other wine investment platform we’re aware of and have used charges a monthly or yearly management fee, as well as other fees — while Vint charges a very straightforward sourcing fee, a one-time up-front fee for each offering, and nothing else for the lifetime of the offering.
Tax-Advantaged Account Support
Vint is the only easy and accessible way to invest in wine through a retirement account — well you can buy wine stocks, however it’s the only way to easily own wine directly and in a tax-advantaged way. Truthfully you can invest in wine through other platforms through an IRA as well, however it’d require lots of paperwork and complications that aren’t present when investing with Vint thanks to their partnership with Alto IRA which faciltates the ownership via an IRA with ease.
Highly Regulated by the SEC in the USA
Most wine investment platforms are…well lets just say not very highly regulated — often not at all — however Vint securitizes every offering they have through the Securities and Exchange Commission in the USA, which is extremely strict, and ensures you truly have rights to something the company, Vint, actually is holding.
We aren’t concerned with other investment platforms for wine and their solvency, so this regulation isn’t really relevant in our decision making on using them or not and it shouldn’t be for most people — however for certain trusts and organizations/businesses this may be very important and the key to allowing investment in the industry, as often times funds, businesses, trusts, and charities are limited to investing in only securitized products (like Vint offers).
Ample Investment Options Available
While Vinovest and other wine investment platforms facilitate wine investment just fine their offerings are quite limited and/or sell out quickly, while on Vint you generally have multiple offerings you can buy into at once immediately upon signing up — with that being said Vint currently lacks a secondary market, meaning their current offerings are all you’ll have access to, making the importance of slowly getting into the market even more important to ensure proper diversification.
Vint Biggest Pros & Cons:
While we’ve mentioned some features and benefits (pros) of Vint we didn’t cover them all — nor have we touched on the cons, so we’ll go over them briefly now starting with the Pros of Vint:
- Highly Regulated & Transparent
- Lots of Wine Collections Available to Invest In
- Easy IRA Support for US Customers
- No Active Management Fees
- Investment Thesis Reports for each Offering
- Good (theoretical) Historic Returns
- Allows Non-Accredited Investors (anybody)
However there are some cons compared to other platforms like Vinovest, such as Vint:
- Lacks a secondary market (no liquidity)
- Lacks an option for a fully managed portfolio
- Tax-structure not very efficient for all investors
- Doesn’t allow you to get investments shipped to you
- Your Investments can be liquidated at any time (you don’t choose when to sell)
Vint Pricing & Fees Overview:
Vint’s Pricing is in the form of an upfront sourcing (acquisition) fee — they don’t officially state what it is but from our calculations it appears to generally be around 8% to 10% on average, but can be a bit higher or lower depending on the offering.
All things considered Vint’s fees/pricing schedule is quite reasonable, as you don’t have any hidden fees or yearly fees — and it comes out to about the same as other platforms like Vinovest, given the timeframe of the investments and holding period Vint typically has for it’s offerings.
In comparison Vinovest charges 2-3% per year, so after around 3-4 years of investing with Vinovest you’d pay the same fees — and as Vint generally holds their offerings for 2-5 years the fees they charge are very comparable, maybe a little higher or lower depending on the offering, but nothing substantial that would make us shy away from one platform or the other — for what you get, storage, maintenance, insurance, and expertise, we’d say they both charge fair fees/expenses.
Vint Expected Returns & Historic Performance:
The historic return for fine wines over the last 20 years wine has been around 10% to 12% per year (more when compounded) Vint, after all fees, currently has a return around…well unfortunately we aren’t able to tell you this as Vint is too new and hasn’t had offerings be closed out yet.
Since Vint lacks a secondary market there’s no way to really say what their historic return has been in the last few years or since their inception — however judging by market conditions of wine and the return other platforms have returned…their historic return has likely been a bit higher than the wine market in general, or around 10% to 14% per year — in fact when we researched a couple of their collections and tried to find them for sale they seem to be within that range.
Overall Vint’s a good way to get exposure to the market, and has a good expected return — although it’s historic performance isn’t 100% clear at this point in time.
Our Experience Using Vint for The Last Few Years:
We started using Vint awhile back shortly after they launched allowing investors to buy their first wine offerings and have slowly expanded our portfolio on the platform ever since — however due to a lack of updates on the price of the bottles and how the investment is moving along we’ve largely switched to investing with Vinovest, a platform similar to Vint.
We’ve had no problems thus far though — although we haven’t yet received proceeds from the sale of one of the collections we’ve bought into, so we aren’t 100% sure how smooth that process is, but at this stage we’re quite confident Vint knows what they’re doing and won’t have any problems when it comes to distributing the proceeds and issuing the relevant documents.
Closing Thoughts & Conclusions:
Vint is our #2 pick for wine investing and a platform we use ourselves — they have great features and very few to no downsides as covered above. With that being said, while Vint has been a good investment for us and has returned higher than the S&P 500 for example we still aren’t going to be allocating a large amount of our portfolio to the wine industry or Vint in particular.
This isn’t for any other reason than the fact that the wine industry is small and we consider it an alternative investment — and while we love alternative investments and have much of, even most, our portfolio in them we don’t keep the majority in any one alternative investment. Diversification is important when investing, and having multiple sources of income, from many different types of investments, is what helps you become wealthy and stay wealthy over the long-term.
Vint Review FAQ's:
Is Vint a Good Investment?
Using Vint in our experience has been a good investment for us as it’s returned quite well over the last few years (or at least we believe it has) — better than the broader wine market most likely, and overall we’re satisfied with our investment in the sector through Vint. It’s not our highest returning investment, but it’s a nice investment that returned above average returned and helped diversify our portfolios away from more risky volatile investments.
Is Vint Legitimate & Trustworthy?
Yes Vint is a legitimate company and platform for investing in wine -- they're highly regulated and transparent and you can easily find information on their founders, employees, and the regulatory documents associated with the company. We have no doubt Vint is legitimate, and we personally invest on the platform.
Does Vint offer any sign-up bonuses or rewards?
As far as we’re aware of Vint does not offer any sign-up bonuses or rewards for new users — they do however have a partner program that allows websites like this one to earn a small savings on platform fees or in some cases compensation if people sign up through their special partner links. You can use ours by clicking here, doing so will support us and help us keep these articles up to date and accurate.
How long has Vint been around?
Vint was founded in 2019 and began functioning as an investment platform shortly thereafter when it had it’s first wine offerings made available to the general public and investors like you and me. Since then they've expanded to a team of 15 to 30 people depending on if you count full-time vs part time employees.
Is Vint (the company) Publicly Traded?
Currently Vint is not publicly traded and there is no stock would-be investors in the company can buy publicly. Instead is entirely funded through private funding rounds and the personal capital of the owners and employees of the company who have been encouraged to invest in the business their self — one day we beleive they’ll go public or be acquired, but this is likely still a few years way.
Is Vint Legitimate & Trustworthy?
Yes Vint is a legitimate company and platform for investing in wine -- they're highly regulated and transparent and you can easily find information on their founders, employees, and the regulatory documents associated with the company. We have no doubt Vint is legitimate, and we personally invest on the platform.
Our overall Vint rating
3.7
Bottom Line:
While Vint on paper should be quite comparable in the long-term to competitors like Vinovest in terms of overall return their track-record is shorter and less verifiable, the platform useability and liquidity of investments is worse, and well if I’m being honest in most cases I’d say it’s better to go with their main competitor Vinovest.
The one case where we’d say Vint is likely a better choice is if you want to invest via an IRA, as Vint has partnerships with an alternative-investing IRA company — AltoIRA — which allows you to invest via a tax-advantaged account if that’s what you’re looking for.