Are wines in My Reserves labelled with my name?

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.