Storage with Members' Reserves

We will invoice you annually for your Reserves storage charges. We’ll notify you in the month before the invoice confirming the charges for the coming year’s storage. Any wines withdrawn before the first of that month will not incur a charge.

We invoice Reserve Rental February through to November. The month that you will be invoiced for Reserve rental is determined by the last digit in your share number. It will be February if your share number ends in 2, March if it ends in 3 etc, to October if it ends in 0. Share numbers ending in a 1 will be invoiced in November.

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Where we hold a default payment card for you, we will charge that card when we invoice you for your storage charges on the 1st of next month. You can check your preferred card or add one online in My account > Manage my details > Payment methods.

If you do not have a default card but we hold a Direct Debit instruction for your Rental charges, we will debit this account at least 14 days after the date of your invoice. We are no longer accepting new Direct Debits for Members’ Reserves storage payments.

If you do not have a stored payment method of any type, then we will ask you to make immediate payment when we send your invoice and inventory.

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Yes. You can choose to remove a few bottles at a time from Members’ Reserves, with the exception of pre-mixed or member-mixed cases which must be withdrawn as a full case. A £10 handling charge will apply if you are withdrawing fewer than three bottles of the same wine at a time. 

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Wines placed into Members’ Reserves after 2004 which were packaged in a wooden box will be delivered in the box if the full case is withdrawn. If you have already withdrawn some of the bottles from a case of wine that was stored in a wooden box, the remainder of the bottles will be delivered in a Wine Society cardboard box and we are not able to send you the wooden box separately. Wines placed into Members’ Reserves before 2004 will be delivered in a Wine Society box.

Wines that are offered in three-bottle cases are not stored in wooden boxes.

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Yes. However, the full case of wine would need to be transferred and duty and VAT on the value of the wines will be payable at the current rate. You can transfer your wines to Duty-Paid Members’ Reserves via the website by navigating to ‘My Account’ and selecting ‘Members’ Reserves’. Alternatively, please email Member Services or call us on 01438 741177.

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In-Bond Members’ Reserves is the default storage option for members’ en primeur wines when they arrive in the UK. It allows you to store your wines with us but only pay the duty and VAT when you decide to withdraw them. The annual storage charge is £9.96 per case per year, the same price as Duty-Paid Members’ Reserves.

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You can view details of the wines you currently have stored in Members’ Reserves via the website by navigating to ‘My Account’ and selecting ‘Members’ Reserves’. Alternatively, please email Member Services or call us on 01438 741177.

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Members’ Reserves is our temperature-controlled storage facility, enabling members to store their wines in perfect conditions. It is £9.96 per 12-bottle case per year (prorated depending on the number of bottles stored in Reserves) For information, click here.

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Yes. Wines can be added to Members’ Reserves in multiples of 6, either mixed by you, or as originally sold. However, please note that if you are making up your own mixed case, the number of bottles in your basket (excluding any full cases of a single wine, or pre-mixed cases) will be the size of the case placed into Members’ Reserves.

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Wines purchased from an En Primeur or First Release offer are automatically placed in your Members’ Reserves when we notify you of their arrival at The Society. For wines purchased duty-paid, you can select storage in Reserves as an option in the web checkout, or when you place an order by phone. Wines can be added in six or twelve-bottle cases, either mixed by you, or as originally sold. We may, at our discretion, allow the storage of individual bottles where we have restricted the amount available for sale.

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Wine can be withdrawn in the same way in which it was originally stored with us (either as a full case of a single wine, a pre-mixed or member-mixed case, or individual bottles where we restricted the amount for sale) at any time.

You can choose to remove any number of bottles from your Reserves (except from within pre-mixed and member-mixed cases which must be withdrawn as a full case). Bottle withdrawal will remain free of charge if you are taking out three or more bottles of the same wine at a time. A £10 handling charge will apply to your order if you are withdrawing fewer than three bottles of the same wine.

Where does the £10 handling fee apply?

There will be no handling fee if:

1. You are withdrawing wines the same way they were originally put into Reserves. For example:

  • Full cases of a single wine
  • Pre-mixed cases
  • Member-mixed cases
  • Individual bottles where we restricted quantity

 

2. You are removing three or more bottles of the same wine.

However, a £10 handling fee (per order, per delivery address) will apply if removing one or two bottles of a single wine or a mix of such bottles. The handling fee will also apply if you add one or two bottles to a full-case withdrawal.

View a diagram which lays out these changes in more detail (PDF)

Can I remove individual bottles from pre-packed mixed cases or mixed cases that I made up myself?

It will not be possible to remove individual bottles from pre-packed mixed cases or mixed cases you have made up yourself. These will still need to be withdrawn in the same way as they were put into Reserves. 

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Your Wine Society membership is for life so when you die your share, and any assets associated with it, become part of your estate.  Assets associated with your share include wines stored in Members’ Reserves, wines on order that have not yet been delivered (including those purchased En Primeur) and any credit on your account. You can stipulate what you would like to happen to these assets in your Will and we will take instruction from your executor.

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We do not label every case in Reserves with the member’s name. The majority of the 300,000 cases in Members’ Reserves were originally purchased from one of our En Primeur and First Release offers. When these wines arrive in the UK, the cases are moved into Members’ Reserves on pallets, and are stored alongside all other identical cases of the same wine. The system will show that you own one of these cases, but a specific case is not assigned to you until you withdraw it from Reserves.   

There are around 50 cases stored on each pallet, and to unload and reload the pallet to label every case on arrival would require unnecessary inefficiency and cost. Likewise, should you be the first member to call off their case, and it happens to be stored halfway down the pallet, further time would be required to reach your specific case. Given that all wines purchased from The Society have the same impeccable provenance – arriving directly from the producer, untouched – we see no benefit in labelling each case of wine at the outset. This approach is agreed by HMRC and our auditors. 

Some storage facilities, on the other hand, are obliged to label up cases individually, as the wines (even if they are the same wines) may have come from different sources and been subject to different storage conditions, so it is important that they despatch exactly the same case as was received in from the customer. This is costly for those businesses and is one reason why The Society offers more competitive storage rates.  

Unlike the process for wines purchased in-bond, described above, any wines originally purchased duty-paid that are placed in Members’ Reserves are labelled with the member’s name.

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