More Money Podcast - 316 Should Wine Be Part of Your Investment Portfolio? - Atul Tiwari, CEO of Cult Wines Americas

Episode Date: February 23, 2022

Right now the investing space has been taken over with talk of cryptocurrencies and NFTs, but those aren't the only alternative investment options for investors. Heck, there are some alternative investments that even include physical things attached to them...like wine! That’s why I've got Atul Tiwari, CEO of Cult Wines Americas, back on the show to discuss all the ins and outs of investing in a portfolio of fine wine (and yes, you can actually drink the wine if you want too!). You may remember Atul from episode 170, when he was CEO of Vanguard Canada. Back then, he came on the show to share how he helped pioneer ETF investing in Canada and some of the benefits of index funds. Now, he's in a very different role, focused on educating and helping investors diversify their portfolios even more by investing in fine wine. Cult Wines originated in the U.K. in 2007, and Atul has taken on the task of bringing the company over to North America, making wine investing more accessible to Canadian investors. In this episode, Atul goes over everything from what’s the return on investment with fine wines, how to build a strong portfolio, fee structure, as well as where the wine is physically stored. As someone who enjoys a glass of wine (but rarely spends more than $15 on a bottle), I wanted to know what constitutes a fine wine, and are there wines that are bought without the intention of drinking it? If you’re keen to find out the answers and more about fine wine investing, then you’ll love this episode! For full episode show notes visit: https://jessicamoorhouse.com/316 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello, hello, hello, and welcome back to the More Money Podcast. This is your host, Jessica Morehouse, and this is episode 316 of the show. And you know, you'd think with me having over 300 episodes, I would have covered everything under the sun at this point in terms of personal finance and investing. No, that is why I love personal finance so much. There's always something new that you haven't really, you know, kind of gone deep with or even talked about at all on the show. And that is what we're going to be talking about for this show. I have Atal Tiwari back on the show. You may remember him from a previous episode of the show. Like really, I mean, if you're a longtime listener, props to you because this episode, this was episode 170 back in October of 2018. Oh, the before times, the before times. Now,

back when we did that episode, which my gosh, was a while ago now, he was at Vanguard Canada. So he was the CEO of Vanguard Canada. He was also employee number one of Vanguard Canada, which is actually pretty cool. And so we had a whole episode, make sure to check it out, JessicaMorehouse.com slash 170, all about index investing and ETFs and things like that. Well, a lot has changed, you know, since that time. Now, he has a very different role. He is now the CEO of Cult Wines Americas. And he, you know, recently, I've been following, I mean, we've been LinkedIn friends for a long time. And so I knew about this. But he, you know, approached me, he's like, oh, I'd love to come on the show to talk about fine wine investing. I'm like, absolutely, because that is something I know nothing about. Very interested because I love wine, but I'm

certainly not, I mean, I don't know good wine, you know what I mean? Like a good wine to me is spending $20 because I'm still cheap. But I love wine and I love investing. So what's not to love about this exciting topic? And honestly, you're going to love this episode. I learned so much. It is a very different market. It is it's a whole market like it's a market I didn't really know existed. But just like you know, fine art, which I do have an episode about that coming up. It is its own thing. It is an asset class. It's a very exciting episode. So you are going to love it. But before I get to this amazing interview with Atal, well, just hey, number one reminder, it is currently as of the day that this

episode is dropping, it's currently RSP season, which just means if you want to make an RSP contribution and make that contribution count as a deduction for your 2021 taxes, you have until March 1st to do that. So hey, you know, reminder in case this was something that you forgot about. But also it's, you know, tax time. And, you know, to talk more about how to do your taxes, let me talk about this podcast episode sponsor. This episode of the More Money Podcast is supported by TurboTax Canada. It's another tax season, but things are going to be a bit different for many Canadians this year. For instance, did you know that 60% of Canadians started a side hustle in 2021? As someone who

started her first side hustle a decade ago, then made it into her full-time gig, I love hearing things like this. But it could also be why I've been bombarded with tax questions over the past 12 months. Let me be real with you. If you have a side hustle on top of your day job, or if you've recently become your own boss, well, your taxes will be a bit more complicated than normal. But thanks to TurboTax and their suite of services, no matter what tax situation you find yourself in, they've got you covered. All you have to do is go to TurboTax.ca and hit the Get Started button. From there, they'll suggest the right tax service to best fit your needs. For example, you can use TurboTax and do your taxes yourself, or you can use their Assistant Review service to

get a real tax expert to guide you through the platform and then review your return to make sure you don't miss anything before you file. Or if even thinking about doing your taxes gets your palms sweaty, you can also hand everything over to one of TurboTax's qualified tax experts to do it all for you with their full service option. To get a jumpstart on your taxes with TurboTax, Canada's number one tax software trusted by millions of Canadians for over 20 years, visit TurboTax.ca. Once again, visit TurboTax.ca to get started. Well, welcome back to the More Money Podcast at all. It's been a while, several years, even since you've last been on the show and you're doing something very different. So back when you were first on the show, you were here, you were working at Vanguard,

we were talking about index investing. Now I have you on the show talking about a very different form of investing, investing in alternatives. Honestly, part of the reason I wanted you on the show is also just to see how did you make that leap? But also, I haven't really had too many people on the show talking about different ways to invest and not just, you know, I feel like you probably see this a lot online, not just cryptocurrency. Let's talk about alternatives, but actual alternatives, such as wine. So, so excited to have you back on the show to discuss this with me. Well, thanks excited to have you back on the show to discuss this with me. Well, thanks for having me, Jessica. Really looking forward to our conversation.

Yeah. So fill me in. What happened? So you were the CEO of Vanguard for a very long time and, you know, making a very big transition to what you're doing now. So you work now at Cult Wines. You're the CEO. Tell us kind of why did you make that change in career? Sure. Yeah. After my time at Vanguard, I was looking to do something a little bit different. My background has been with large organizations, BMO and Vanguard. And as you rightly point out, I guess you could consider me a champion of index investing and ETFs having started both of their ETF businesses in Canada. So don't get me wrong.

Those are still great investments for the core of any portfolio. If you're looking for index returns, ETFs are the way to go. Low cost and they get you the exposure you're looking for index returns, ETFs are the way to go, low cost, and they get you the exposure you're looking for. But there's also the explore part of a portfolio. And as we've always talked about, there is room for active management. And in certain spaces, it makes a lot of sense. And I happen to be in one of those spaces. So I can talk a little bit more about that. But just in terms of how it came about, is that I had always known that fine wine as an asset class was established in Europe and Asia, but it never really been promoted to any degree in North America.

And I'm a fine wine aficionado, and I always wondered why that was the case. As a former lawyer, I thought it was regulation. But as I kind of dove into it, I realized that it can be done under our regulations. And so I built a business plan, reached out to Cult Wines in the UK. From my research, they appeared to be and are the best at it in the world. And we worked out a partnership which has led to me looking after Cult Wines' growth in the Americas region, which includes the US. So it was a great way to marry a couple of passions of mine, fine wine and asset management, and also a fun way to build a unique asset class and a business in North America. So I obviously have, I mean, I'm a lover of wine. I wouldn't say fine

wine, let's be honest. If I'm spending 20 bucks on a bottle, that's like, oh, hey, we're spending 20 bucks on a bottle. I've grown. So when it comes to investing in wine, what do you mean? What does that look like? Obviously, we're not drinking this wine, are we? Are we? Are we drinking it? No?

Some of us are. So Colt Wines has started in 2007 in the UK, and we've got about $380 million in assets to date, with growth being terrific over the last five years. Our CAGR on revenue, sorry, AUM is about 28%. So growth is fantastic. The way that we structure the investment is as an investor, you come on board just as you would with any other investment, KYC, KYP, your risk profile, time horizon, and

objectives. And then what we do is we take that and we match your objectives with an actual portfolio of wine. So you own the wine and we manage that fine wine portfolio for you. And what we found traditionally, historically, is that about 80% of our wines get sold. So they're purely investments. And about 20% clients say, hey, you've got this or I've got this wonderful case of Bordeaux in my portfolio. I think rather than sell it, I'll take possession of it and enjoy it. So you are able to do that with this investment. Interesting. So it's sort of similar to, I guess, maybe making a withdrawal from your, you know, investment account, and then using that cash to buy something

is like you taking the wine to drink it, or it could be the same as like, you know, owning a stock, you own it, hope it appreciates, and then you can sell it to another investor. And that's how you would make your money off of wine. Interesting. So where is the I'm curious, so you build these portfolios of wine, where is the physical wine? Where is it stored? Right. So most of our assets are stored in professional storage in the UK. And there's a couple of reasons for that. Number one is London is the largest global market for fine wine. So when it comes time to exit your positions, you're right in the center of liquidity with the broadest and deepest market. It also has very efficient connections and ties to Hong Kong, which would

be the second largest market. So when we acquire the fine wine for our clients, we'll transport it in perfect conditions, store it in our facilities in the UK, which by the way are operated by an independent third party called London City Bond. And LCB operates about 2 million square feet of storage space across the UK. So they're experts at this. And we use about 24,000 square feet for our needs. And so we'll store it there. We'll insure it through reputable global brokers. And then we'll manage it for you on an active basis. So it's it is in the UK for the most part. And again, it's really for liquidity purposes. So as an investor, I would imagine, I would imagine that there's fees just like any other kind of investment would part of those like

what are the what is the fee structure look like? So obviously, there's like the portfolio kind of management, but also, I guess, storage fees for the physical wine? Yes. And so as a former ETF person, and having worked at Vanguard, fees are very important, of course. So when you look at your investments, obviously you need to consider the fee levels. So I'm happy to say that in the alt space, Colt Wines is a very reasonable fee level. We have different tiers. So at the entry point at $12,500, you open an account. We do all of the KYC and profiling, but it's done digitally. So our algorithm will match the fine wines to your profile. And then we'll manage and rebalance

through our algorithm. At that level, at $12,500 to $45,000, the fee is 2.95%. That's the management fee. And what that gets you is everything I just talked about. It's the acquisition, transportation, storage costs, insurance, and then active management. At the $45,000 level, the fee comes down to 2.75%. And in that case, you get a dedicated portfolio manager. So now your account is actually managed by one of our PMs, and you have full access to the PM quarterly reviews if you like them, or every six months, whatever duration of reviews you'd like to have. And really, the onboarding is done in conjunction with your portfolio manager. So those are the two earlier levels. And then we have tiers that move up from there at lower management fees.

And at the top tier, it's 2.25%. And those are the only fees we charge. So often in alt investments, you might see a performance fee. We don't charge performance fees. And the other important thing is we don't charge any commissions on the exit of your positions. So we will sell them into the market or to merchants or to traders. But if we incur any commissions, we won't charge them to the client, which is also why we won't sell through auction because the commissions there are pretty high and they'll eat into your returns. So, yeah, I'm curious now then, what is the type of market for fine wines? Like, you know, it makes sense, you know, think, to most of us regular investors, just if you want to buy a stock, you go and exchange. Obviously, it's probably not as popular fine wine

since it is a very specific and expensive alternative investment. So how hard is it if you want to exit a position, sell some of your wine to find an investor to buy that? Is it difficult? How liquid is it? Yeah. One of the things that we're trying to do, obviously, is make it more of an accessible investment. Fine wine's always been something that the wealthy have been able to invest in and enjoy. And part of having the minimum at 12 1⁄2

is to give more people an opportunity to participate in the asset class. And to your question around liquidity, there's actually a pretty liquid global market, and it is a global market for fine wine. And it starts with the supply. So we would estimate that about 1% of the wine that's created every year in the world is investment grade. And that's about $4.5 billion. And so the great thing about fine wine is that the supply-demand mechanism works perfectly because there's only a finite amount made every year, but the demand is there, and as the life of the wine goes on, demand actually goes up, but supply comes down. So that's where you get your price appreciation.

And when it comes time to exit a position, we have a broad network of private individuals, merchants, traders. And then one thing I've learned a lot about over the last two years is that there's actually, essentially, you call it a stock exchange for wine. And it too is based in London. It's called Livex. And it was started in the year 2000. And to be a member, you have to be a professional, in other words, in the trade. And Cult Wines is a member, but individuals can't be. But all day, every day, there's over 500 merchants who are members, and they're making markets in fine wines. And so that would be another place that we would go to sell,

because there's daily markets being made on on these fine wines. Amazing. So you know, you mentioned fees, and you know, obviously, you know, you know this, I'm an index investor, I love a good low fee. So those fees are a little bit higher. But I guess, are you paying more to get more? What kind of rate of return are you looking at for this kind of asset class? Yeah, great question. I'm going to answer that with the investment merits first and then get to performance. So the other great things about alternatives that you know, Jessica, is that they offer a lot of other benefits to an overall portfolio when you look at it holistically.

So fine wine has a number of characteristics that are great for diversification, one being very low correlations to equities, and with markets at all-time highs right now, that's a good thing. Very low volatility when compared to equities or gold or other instruments. And then what us investment geeks call low downside capture. So what that means is, for your listeners who may not know that term, is that when equity markets go down a lot,

fine wine doesn't go down nearly enough. And you can show that over periods like the 2008 fiscal crisis or the first two months of last year. So in 2008, the S&P 500 was down 38%, and the fine wine index was down less than 1%. So there's a real great buffering quality to your overall portfolio. In addition to all that, it's a real asset, so a good hedge against inflation. And then, we've, since inception, returned about 10 to 12 percent per year on our average portfolios. Since we're separately managed accounts, what we do is we aggregate the performance of all the portfolios and create what we call the cult wines index. And again, since inception around that, last year, we had quite a good year, it was about 16%. So you can, over the long term, have some pretty good returns as well. Pretty stable. I was curious about that. Like what kind of indexes exist for, you know, fine wine trading?

Do all the kind of participants, like the big companies like Colt Wines, have to create their own index? Is there an index, like, you know, more of a broad market wine index? And there is. We've got an index for that. That's right. So LiveX, I call it a stock exchange, but obviously it's trading actual wine. LiveX in London creates what are basically the accepted indexes for the industry. And you see them quoted in Reuters and Bloomberg and other financial press. And so using the pricing that they have, obviously, in all of these fine wines, they've created a number of indexes. And the one that is most broadly quoted would be called the Livex 1000.

And that's an index made up of the 1,000 mostly traded fine wines in the world. And so that would be your benchmark. From there, they have a number of sub-indices by region. So, for example, last year, Champagne was the region that performed the best of all fine wine regions with about a 41% return. And then you can go down to various other regions. And so there is a dispersion amongst regions, which also is why we preach, just like any other investment company, diversification. Yeah, don't just invest in champagne, maybe also red wine and other things. So actually, that's my other question. What kind of products are we talking about when you're building this wine portfolio? How exactly is that built? So we have an investment committee, of which I'm a member, a global investment committee, and we meet quarterly. And we consider all of our qualitative and quantitative inputs into creating a benchmark portfolio allocation based on your risk profile.

So that's where it all starts. And right now for our average portfolio, we would have 80% in French wines, so Burgundy, Bordeaux, Champagne, probably 10% in Italian wines. And then the remaining 10% would be what we call the rest of the world. So US, Australia, Germany, Spain. And that would be an optimal mix. And what we do is every quarter we'll review that based on our data, our macro views on the pandemic or climate change issues, tariffs, those are important to look at as well. They all impact the consumption and purchase of wine as well as pricing. So we'll build it with a benchmark and then our PMs, our portfolio managers,

will then manage the accounts towards the benchmark that is set by the investment committee. On average, a portfolio would have about a 20% turnover per year. amount of turnover because we do counsel our clients to take a minimum of three to five years of a view in terms of their whole periods. We don't have any lockups. We don't have any whole periods. So you can exit whenever you wish. But to really give wine a chance to appreciate, you should think of this as kind of a three to five year, five year ideally investment. Yeah. I mean, that's kind of the advice that is given for even if you're going to buy an individual stock, it's like, you're not really going to see you may not see something right away. But if you stick with it for three to five years, that's kind of the, the goal. So it makes a lot of sense.

Very, um, you know, it all kind of connects, I almost kind of feel I was just thinking when you're talking, I'm like, I feel like sometimes the idea of just investing, especially in the stock market, seems so complicated. But how you're explaining investing in fine wine, it's like, well, that's a product I think most people can understand. I understand what a bottle of wine looks like. Stock is like this thing that doesn't really exist because it's not a tangible thing. But everything that goes into investing in fine wine is applicable to like investing in the stock market so i almost kind of feel like maybe start with like just understanding how the fine wine market kind of works and then you might actually be able to kind of connect the dots to

how does you know investing in just like you know yeah etfs or mutual funds or stocks kind of works out that's just like some thought of like oh yeah i feel like sometimes we need that thing that makes sense and that's why like wine That makes a lot of sense. It's a tangible thing. You can drink it or you can trade it for a profit or something like that. I'm curious when you were talking about, you know, the index and different regions, are there certain regions that always kind of perform, you know, well, or does it depend on like trends and what people just the demand and then even going a bit micro, are there certain wineries that are you know I

guess similar to like a stock like there are certain companies that do well inside their industry yes and absolutely I agree with you Jessica you know the basics of investing are important for everyone to to know and that's why what you do and others in the personal finance area that are educating everybody around finances is very important because that's your building block. And then you can kind of go from there. So, yes. And in terms of your question on regions, producers, traditionally, the market has been dominated by French wines. And there's a number of reasons for that. Exactly. And as I mentioned, even our benchmark portfolio has 80% in the three main French wine regions. So, yes, there's an existing historical market for many of those wines.

And when we do our research, we do consider a lot of inputs, including who is the producer and what is their brand? How have they generally historically performed? How has that particular vineyard performed? And so those types of inputs go into our decision making around establishing positions for clients. What's really neat, though, is that that category that I mentioned called the rest of the world has been growing. So back to LiveX, they've got great trading data. And over the last few years, Bordeaux, which had traditionally been the biggest area for wine investing and trading, has been coming down in percentage. So last year, Bordeaux had its lowest percentage of trading ever at 38%. And the rest of the world category over the last 10 years has come up from about 0.8% to 6%. So what we're seeing is a broadening out amongst investors.

When you see certain prices of iconic wines becoming stratospheric, the value in terms of price appreciation may not actually be as high as finding the new two iconic Chilean producers whose wines have been appreciating in the hundreds of percents over the last couple of years. So that is something that we're watching, and it's really interesting to see. And from our investment management standpoint, identifying some of those up-and-comers that we know are going to continue with those types of returns is important so that we can add

that into client portfolios as well. How do you, I'm wondering, and maybe this just has to do with, you know, the demand of the customer, but how are these fine wines specifically selected? Like there's, you know, these producers of wine that probably produce a lot of different wine. Some goes into just our regular LCBO or, you know, liquor store. And some is, you know, I'm always just curious, you know, whenever I'm even in the section of the liquor store, I'm more like there's ones that are super expensive and ones that are cheaper. What is really the difference? So what constitutes a fine wine? What does that actually mean?

Yeah, great question. There's not really an accepted standard industry definition for what a fine wine is. And so we apply essentially what I've just mentioned, a whole bunch of parameters around a particular wine to determine what we call in our analysis a quality price ratio, which we use our own internal scoring system. And if we believe that the price of the wine currently is at a good price to enter and there's sufficient room for appreciation to meet our client's objectives, we'll invest in it. That said, often when you think of what is a fine wine, there is an element, as we've said, to the producer and the track record of the wine. And that's an important starting point. Often there's sort of intangibles like the prestige of the wine and the reputation. But in terms of tangibles, there's also issues around what is the production level? Like how much of this wine could even be circulated around the globe? And is it scarce? If so, that helps in terms of investment potential. And then we'll even get into more granular analysis around the

vintage year and comparing that to comparable vintage years, critic scores. If the critics rate them quite highly, there's more of a chance that they'll appreciate in price. So again, a lot goes into it and there's not really a standard definition. Yeah, I was curious too about, yeah, the vintage year. Typically when I think of a fine wine, I do think of, you know, when you've seen movies, someone who has a huge, you know, wine cellar, and then they have, you know, wine that's hundreds of years old. But I always kind of thought, you know, with wines, and I'm not an expert at all about wine, but don't some of these wines not last through hundreds of years? Like what is that, I guess, the typical age of a fine wine in some of the portfolios that you offer? Right. So that's why, Jessica, we do ask investors

to think of it at a minimum of a five-year term because you can generalize about wine prices. And they will appreciate and then plateau. And then as consumption increases and demand stays the same or increases, they'll appreciate again and they might plateau and then appreciate. So for us, we're very cognizant of the risk-reward ratio for holding wine. So to your point, yes, at some point, wine is going to mature and it'll start declining. So you don't want to be holding positions to that point. So when you look at our $380 million of wine, which is well over a million bottles, most of them are within the last three to 20 years of vintages because of that reason. At some point, we will make the call that it is better to sell and move into a more recent vintage than to hold on for too long. So that's the investment side of your brain.

On the wine drinking side of the brain, if you're a buyer, you're going to love it. You'll say, wow, this wine's been stored professionally for 20 years. It's probably good for another 20. So I'll buy it now and consume it over the next 15 or 20 years. But that's the consumption side versus the investment side. Interesting. Are there any bottles that are traded, but because of their vintage year or of some sort of historical significance that it is literally just a commodity, you would never actually drink it because if you opened it, it'd probably be vinegar or something. I think in the wine world, generally the answer is yes. But from our perspective, the answer is no, because we're not out there buying 1947 Cheval Blanc, which when you talk about movies, there's the famous Ratatouille movie.

And that's the wine that is served to the serious food critic. And it's, you know, one of the best wines ever made. But we're not out buying it because really two reasons. One is we need to ensure that whatever we're buying is in fact authentic and that it has perfect provenance because we can't obviously for reputational and other reasons, be susceptible to fraudulent bottles. And when you get into some of those really old ones, you have to be very careful. So that's one. And then second is the risk-reward that we've talked about isn't there in those really old bottles.

Those are the ones that people should buy to drink. And then there's wines from the 1800s that very few people try. And when you do hear about it, it's, well, it lasted for about 10 seconds and then tasted like vinegar, depending on the wine. Yeah, that actually does remind me. I did, this was years ago, and there's several documentaries about things like this, but fraud in the, you know, fine wine industry, because I guess if you don't use a reputable company like yours and others, if you do more of that, because I honestly, before really chatting with you, I didn't really realize that there were whole companies, this was a whole market. Because obviously, I'm not the, you know,

probably customer yet, maybe in the future, you never know. But you know, I always thought it was more of a private situation where you'd have to find some sort of dealer and he would, you know, but there was a lot of fraud. I remember watching some documentary about some guy and he made a ton of money just scamming people and like literally putting the labels on wine and stuff like that. So I guess that's another thing. I mean, that's kind of, I'd say, the thing with every kind of investment, but also specifically alternatives, because it is a bit different to make sure that you are protected. So I'm curious, what kind of protections are in place? Like, I was just thinking, like, you know, you store the wine, the wine is stored. What if a bottle breaks? What happens? I guess you said there was insurance. Yeah, that's a really good question. And the fraud you're referring to was Rudy Kurniawan. Yes. Yes, it was a large scale fraud. And unfortunately, in the industry, there's been some of those that have happened. And so for us, we have very strict governance and controls to mitigate against that. And in our 14 years, with the well over a million bottles, you know, maybe 100,000 or more cases, we've never had one incident of fraud or any complaints of fraud. So we do a number of things. And the main thing is trying

to source as much of the wine as we can directly from the producer, because there you've guaranteed that it's coming right from the producer's cellars, and there was no opportunity for fraud. Then we go out to the next level, which would be brokers and negotiants, merchants. These are people with hundreds of years of history and that we've worked with, have references, obviously other people in the trade will know all about them. And so we go there and as I mentioned, like rarely would we ever purchase on auction unless we were sure that all of the papers that come with the wines are authentic so that you know where they came from, how they were stored, where they were purchased, those sorts of things. If we ever had a fraudulent bottle, again, which we have not, our policy is clear in the account agreements that we would replace it if we could in the market or credit the client with the then value of that wine. Insurance doesn't cover fraud, but it covers breakage and things like if the sprinkler system goes off in the storage facility, it'll cover replacement value then. So we do cover

what we can through insurance. Has anything like that ever happened where there is like a sprinkler system or something or like a natural disaster? Not to us, but certainly in the wine world, yes. And if you think of maybe an example in California where there were earthquakes a few years back and unfortunately whole cellars disappeared and it was a sad situation. And there's floods. In Germany this year, there were floods in wine regions. And those can obviously very much damage fine wine and labels and result in a reduction in value. But, you know, fortunately for us, our storage is, as I mentioned, through LCB. And they have a lot of World War II storage spots that they've taken over. And ours is a hangar that was used by the Royal Air Force in the UK in World War II. So it's pretty solid and pretty safe.

Amazing. Well, I guess my last question is, who would be the typical customer? Because you did mention there's kind of a minimum investment that you'd have to make. So who is investing in this? Not just, I'm sure, billionaires, but probably some regular people?

Yes, regular people as well. Our clients run the gamut. So we have high net worths, super high net worths. And then we have professionals who've just started out who wanted to have the benefits of fine wine in their portfolio. They may or may not know a lot about wine, but they understand the investment merits of it. And one of the things that we're doing more of now is along those lines. So we refreshed our brand. We revamped our website and launched in October. Looks great. And we've created sections on what's called Wine Academy. So you can go on there and

actually learn about the history of regions or particular producers that we work with. And we've increased the number of client experiences that we're providing. Obviously, with COVID, it's a little difficult because you can't really have in-person events, but we've had some virtual ones. And in parts of the world where you can have actual events, we've had small ones. And the U.S. will also increase that as well for clients and prospects. And so it's, as you kind of mentioned at one point, quite frankly, I love ETFs, but it's a lot more fun engaging with your wine portfolio than it is your ETF portfolio. For sure. Oh my gosh, that's so funny. Yeah, Okay. My new goal is to make enough money that I can, you know, easily include some fine wine in my portfolio.

That's a new dream, right? I love the idea of when I want to cash out, I get wine. That's one of the best features of the investment. Absolutely. Well, I mean, I feel like I could talk to you about this. I definitely want to look at the Wine Academy. That sounds like one academy I would love to, you know, actually get educated on. That sounds so much fun. Where can people find more information, you know, about this? You mentioned the Academy and Cult Wines, if they want to kind of just

explore this area more. Sure. So it's cultwines.com. You can go on the site and you can take a look. We also, by the way, do some incredible research reports. I would put the reports right up with any equity brokerage. So we have analysts, we have CFAs, we have data scientists. And we put together some pretty good stuff on the regions in particular, producers in particular, as well as recently we've put out our 2022 outlook as well as our Q4 report. So you can just go on the site, download them and read. And it's a wealth of information. So it's a good way to learn. And of course, if you want to chat with

myself or anybody, you can get us through the website and I'm happy to spend time with anyone who's interested. Amazing. Well, thank you so much for taking the time coming on the show once again to talk about fine wine investing and a different type of alternative because there's a lot of great alternative investments out there that are pretty cool that I think a lot of people don't know about. So thanks again for joining me. Thanks for having me, Jessica. Great to be on your show again and look forward to the next time. And when you're ready to invest, let me know.

I'll let you know. And that was episode 316 of the More Money Podcast with Atal Tawari. Make sure to, you know, if you want to learn more about, you know, wine investing and fine wine and who wouldn't, it's just such a beautiful place to be. And it's where, I mean, honestly, when I was talking to Atal, I was just dreaming of vineyards and traveling and drinking wine and also making money like that's just my it's my new fantasy of being a fine like being able to uh invest in fine wine that's my bougie you know future self is what i that's what i dream of now um anyways if you want to learn more about

it make sure to go to wineinvestment.ca uh also make sure to follow cult wines you can follow them on instagram at cult wines you can also follow them on Instagram at cult wines. You can also find them on LinkedIn and Facebook also under cult wines. But again, you can go to wineinvestment.ca to find out more information about all of that good stuff. Now, as always, I have some things that I would like to share with you some updates and life updates as well. So don't go away just a few words about this podcast episode sponsor. This episode of the More Money Podcast is supported by TurboTax Canada. So some of you loyal podcast listeners may already know this, but last year I hired my sister to work as my virtual assistant. She has since expanded her

virtual assisting business to work with other clients, which makes me beam with pride that there's another entrepreneur in the family. But one thing I forgot about was tax season. This will be her first year doing her taxes as a self-employed person, which adds on a new level of stress and complexity already inherent in doing your taxes. Luckily, she'll be using TurboTax Assist and Review Self-Employed. This way, she'll get the important experience of filing her first self-employed tax return, but get some much needed guidance and advice from a qualified tax expert. And as her business grows and her taxes become even more complicated, like mine, she can use TurboTax Full Service Self-Employed. This allows her to hand everything off to a tax expert to do it all for her, saving her valuable times you could instead put towards billing clients or

finding new ones. Does this situation hit close to home? Well, it might because 60% of Canadians started the side hustle in 2021, and this will be their first year reporting self-employed income and business expenses on their tax return. Luckily, no matter your tax situation, TurboTax is here to help. To get a jumpstart on your taxes with TurboTax, Canada's number one tax software trusted by millions of Canadians for over 20 years, visit TurboTax.ca. Once again, visit TurboTax.ca to get started. Okay, first and foremost, you know, reminder, if you ever want to check out the show notes for any episode, they are all at JessicaMoorhouse.com slash podcast. You can also, if you know the episode number, which it always is, you know, there, you know,

wherever you're listening, it's on the episode title. You know, for this example, for this episode, since for episode 316, you would go to jessicamorehouse.com slash 316. So if you want to learn more about the guests that I had on or the topic that we explored some links that we mentioned or resources, that's where you can find all that. So for this episode, again, it's jessicamorehouse.com slash 316. And since I mentioned resources, in case you don't know if you're new to the show, well, I've got a free resource library, jessicamorehouse.com slash resources is where you can find all that good stuff. Again, it's free. I've got some budget spreadsheets in there. I've got some guides. I've got past webinars. You know, I did a webinar a few

weeks ago. If you missed it, that's okay. It is in there. It is in there for you to watch if you want to. It was all about goal setting and getting your life together for the new year. I mean, I know it's February, but it's still kind of the new year. So you can check all that out at jessicamorehouse.com slash resources. Like I mentioned, I think in a previous episode, maybe it was last week, I've got a lot of things, exciting things happening. They're just not ready yet, right? So I'm building a new website. I'm getting some new headshots, improving my investing course. FYI, I've got an investing course, which I'll mention in a moment. Updating my budget spreadsheets. Everything's getting a bit of an overhaul. So exciting things to come. Just not ready yet. We're not there yet, but it's

coming. It's coming, I would say. I think all that in the next month. Let's just be honest, Jessica, I always like give myself ridiculous timelines, and then just don't make them. So let's just say a month. And then who knows what's after that? I mean, I've got, I finally Oh, here's the other life update that I was very excited to share with you. Not that you care, you may care, you may not, but it was a big deal for me. So you know, you know, if you have been listening to the show, I recently moved into my new house, and we had to do some work on it, not a crazy amount, have been listening to the show, I recently moved into my new house, and we had to do some work on it, not a crazy amount, but we had to kind of redo the stairs and get new carpets and all that kind of stuff. I am telling you, it is crazy, the difference of

just getting new carpets, like it's a new freaking house, like it feels like we're in a new brand new house, just the carpets alone. So very excited. Also, like, I know who likes carpets because everyone's just like, oh, hardwood floors. Carpets are great. Carpets are great, especially when you live in a hundred year old house in Toronto, and your house is slanted. Also, all houses basically that are this old in Toronto are slanted. So carpets kind of, you know, make it a little bit easier to not think it's so slanted. The doors will tell you though, all of our doors are a bit we have to kind of cut some of the bottom off because some of them don't close properly. Fun stuff. Anyways, that why that you should care maybe it doesn't matter to you. But why I care is because this means I'm finally

back in my house finally set up my home office and working on making that nice and hopefully I can make my dream of having this we have this kind of weird bonus room that's like a weird in my house, finally set up my home office, and working on making that nice. And hopefully I can make my dream of having this, we have this kind of weird bonus room that's like a weird room in the basement with no windows. But I think that would be a great YouTube studio. So I'm going to work on trying to make that out and hopefully making some new videos. I have it in my mind that I'm going to make a video very soon. We'll see if that happens. I don't know. We'll see. I just don't, I don't want to put too much pressure on myself because I got a lot of projects going on, deadlines. But hey, that's the plan. So FYI, I've got a YouTube channel, if you don't know about it,

jessicamorehouse.com slash YouTube, where you can find all that. Also, as of me recording this, which is a few days before I released this episode, I am so close to getting to 10,000 Instagram followers. So if you don't follow me on Instagram, please let's do this together. Be part of the celebration of me getting to 10k. Please just follow me at Jessica I Morehouse. I often I'm restarting really doing my AMAs. And so you know, if you ever have questions, I like doing AMAs on Instagram. So that's where you can kind of get your question answered. So that's the excitement in my life. Honestly, the carpets was the biggest deal. It was a big deal. Also expensive. Yeah, it's not cheap being a homeowner. Let me tell you. So I'm working really hard, working really hard to make the money to pay for all of the things.

But hey, gotta love the carpets. Gotta love them. What else is going on? Let me see. Let me see anything. Oh, yeah, I mentioned I have an investing course if you're not aware of it. It's called Wealth Building Blueprint for Canadians. This course is specifically for Canadians because you know, the majority of you listening are Canadian. And I am also Canadian. Hello. And so if you want to learn about investing, this is a course specifically on how to get started with passive investing, like I talk often on the show. That is, you know, the course for you. If you go to JessicaMorehouse.com slash WBB or the show notes or just go to JessicaMorehouse.com, you'll be able to find a link to it. You can find more

information about the curriculum and you can apply to potentially be a student for the course if it's the right fit for you. Okay, I think that is it for me. But like I mentioned, I've got some really, really Oh, one last thing reminder in case you didn't listen to you know, previous episodes this season. I am giving away a ton of books that have been featured on the show, you know, recent book I'm giving away. Kumiko loves a new book. She was on the show last week, My Money My Way, jessicamorehouse.com slash contest. I know sometimes I mentioned, hey, there's a new book and then like you'll check and then it's like the day that the episode airs and it's not there. It's because I literally manually have to like update that page and sometimes I forget and then it's like later in the day that I remember. So that's

why. So check. It is all there. All that's updated. So go to jessicamorehouse.com slash contest is where you can find all that information. Okay, I'm gonna let you go. Big shout out to my wonderful podcast editor, Matt Rideout. And I will see you back here next Wednesday for a fresh new episode of the More Money Podcast. Have a good rest of your week and weekend. See you next Wednesday.

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