What is Wine Collection Insurance & Why Do I Need it?

You come home from a vacation to find your climate-controlled wine cellar has malfunctioned. Wine bottles are uncorked from the extreme heat and fine wine is spilling all over the floor. Or you may come home to find your house has been vandalized or ransacked. Hopefully you have insurance to protect you against such risks to your home- but what about your wine collection?

Your collection faces many risks and exposures that a homeowner’s policy doesn’t always cover. Breakage is the most common liability for wine collections. Fire, flood, theft, and in-transit (the shipping of wine from place to place) are other sources of liability.

A lesser known area of specialty coverage, wine collection insurance is essential to protecting your investment, especially large collections. Ideally, a wine collection, like fine art and jewelry, should be separately insured against mishaps such as fire, breakage and theft.

There are several options available to insure you get the best protection possible for your collection. Most policies limit values for temperature change and other losses to $10,000. At Sinclair Risk & Financial Management, we have programs that can insure collections worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.

In insuring your collection, it is important to get coverage that covers a wide number of perils. You can choose a blanket coverage option to cover your entire collection under one limit, itemized coverage for your more valuable wines, or a combination of the two options.

Sinclair’s Private Client Group division works with several clients who have an extensive wine collection in their home. We understand the value of such a collection and the need for specialized insurance. We also work with insurance companies and wine experts to offer comprehensive wine protection insurance programs that include not only securing the proper insurance coverages but also implementing effective loss control services and inventory systems. Contact us today for more information.