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Insuring Your Wine - 11/19/2008 6:10:36 AM

annerk

Posts: 252
Joined: 10/16/2008
From: Central Florida
Status: online

JohnNezlek's Pricing question post has brought up another topic. Who do you insure your wine with? Do they also carry your home owner's cover? How did the underwriter come up with the premium? Do you schedule each more valuable/rare bottle individually or the entire collection as a whole valued at "X" dollars?

With a wine collection being such a constantly evolving creature as bottles are added and/or consumed, how do they value it?

And just to get an initial value, what do they use?

Post #: 1

RE: Insuring Your Wine - 11/19/2008 6:20:40 AM

JohnNezlek

Posts: 218
Joined: 12/14/2006
From: Gloucester, Virginia
Status: offline

Excellent question. As my cellar has increased in value over the years, I probably need to talk about this with my insurance agent. My guess is that it can be covered by an additional rider (I believe it is called) to one's homeowner's policy (at least here in the US). This may or may not cost any additional money depending upon the policy. They -- the insurance company -- want to know (understandably) what they are insuring. Problems occur when clients make claims that are widely disparate from what the company imagined/believed the client had. This also holds for other household possessions that are unusually valuable -- e.g., Oriental carpets, silver, and the like. If you are really worried about this, a simple video in a safe-deposit box will work wonders if you need to make a claim. The real answers can be had from your insurer.

_____________________________

Too many wines, too little time.

(in reply to annerk)

Post #: 2

RE: Insuring Your Wine - 11/19/2008 6:38:00 AM

annerk

Posts: 252
Joined: 10/16/2008
From: Central Florida
Status: online

It is called a rider, sometimes a "schedule." I seperately schedule photography equipment on my homeowners policy already, so I'm aware of the concept. But that's a lot more black and white. (No pun intended.) They took the receipts for the purchases as the value (I insure for full replacement cost) and that was that. Until I add another body or lens, it is what it is. There was an additional cost, it was farily reasonable, I think they insured $6000 worth of equipment for about $80 a year. They wouldn't insure any of the gadgets--memory cards, cases, tripods etc., which I wasn't all that happy about as that is another $2000 in assorted stuff. They would only cover bodies and lenses. I couldn't understand why they would cover a $105 50mm prime lens but wouldn't cover a $650 tripod. Craziness, and I think an underwriter who really didn't have a clue what she was writing cover for.

My current carrier doesn't insure wine, and (obviously) really didn't want to cover the photo equipment either, which is a major reason I'm considering changing carriers at renewal time. That's one of the reasons I'm asking who people are insuring with.

(in reply to JohnNezlek)

Post #: 3

RE: Insuring Your Wine - 11/19/2008 6:41:26 AM

JohnNezlek

Posts: 218
Joined: 12/14/2006
From: Gloucester, Virginia
Status: offline

I will conatct my insurer, Nationwide, to see what they say.

_____________________________

Too many wines, too little time.

(in reply to annerk)

Post #: 4

RE: Insuring Your Wine - 11/19/2008 7:21:06 AM

pbm

Posts: 348
Joined: 3/5/2008
From: New Hope, Pennsylvania
Status: offline

quote:

ORIGINAL: annerk

It is called a rider, sometimes a "schedule." I seperately schedule photography equipment on my homeowners policy already, so I'm aware of the concept. But that's a lot more black and white. (No pun intended.) They took the receipts for the purchases as the value (I insure for full replacement cost) and that was that. Until I add another body or lens, it is what it is. There was an additional cost, it was farily reasonable, I think they insured $6000 worth of equipment for about $80 a year. They wouldn't insure any of the gadgets--memory cards, cases, tripods etc., which I wasn't all that happy about as that is another $2000 in assorted stuff. They would only cover bodies and lenses. I couldn't understand why they would cover a $105 50mm prime lens but wouldn't cover a $650 tripod. Craziness, and I think an underwriter who really didn't have a clue what she was writing cover for.

My current carrier doesn't insure wine, and (obviously) really didn't want to cover the photo equipment either, which is a major reason I'm considering changing carriers at renewal time. That's one of the reasons I'm asking who people are insuring with.

At least in the US Chubb is considered one of the leading insurers of private collections be they wine, autos, art, etc. I have personal experience with them and highly recommend their consideration. You will pay more but it will be worth it with regard to their service -- they are responsive and will not hassle you if you have a claim. They are represented by independent agents.

_____________________________

PBM
"Never Sell Principle Short"
Dave O'Neal

(in reply to annerk)

Post #: 5

RE: Insuring Your Wine - 11/19/2008 7:24:13 AM

rbazinet

Posts: 188
Joined: 4/13/2008
From: Toronto, Ontario
Status: offline

There is a clause in my house insurance for items. I assumed it included wine. I do have a question. Was the rationale for this post that wine may be stolen or in light of a natural disaster?

(in reply to annerk)

Post #: 6

RE: Insuring Your Wine - 11/19/2008 7:54:31 AM

annerk

Posts: 252
Joined: 10/16/2008
From: Central Florida
Status: online

quote:

ORIGINAL: pbm
At least in the US Chubb is considered one of the leading insurers of private collections be they wine, autos, art, etc. I have personal experience with them and highly recommend their consideration. You will pay more but it will be worth it with regard to their service -- they are responsive and will not hassle you if you have a claim. They are represented by independent agents.

Good to hear, as they were the company that's #1 on my short list without really doing much research. Of course I'd like to hear from people who might use other companies as well.

(in reply to pbm)

Post #: 7

RE: Insuring Your Wine - 11/19/2008 8:05:29 AM

annerk

Posts: 252
Joined: 10/16/2008
From: Central Florida
Status: online

quote:

ORIGINAL: rbazinet

There is a clause in my house insurance for items. I assumed it included wine. I do have a question. Was the rationale for this post that wine may be stolen or in light of a natural disaster?

I'm not so much concerned about natural disasters, my home is 200+ feet above sea level, well built, and far enough inland that hurricanes aren't a huge concern. I worry more about other perils--mostly fire. The average thief wants to get in and out fast, and is generally looking for cash and electronics which can easily be sold on the street for cash--flat screens, laptops, video games and consoles. They might grab the bottle of Dom Perignon because they recognize the name, but would probably ignore most of the rest of it. Too hard to carry out quickly and wouldn't get them as much on the street as an X-Box with 30 games would.

My insurance automatically covers up to a certain dollar amount of some items--probably about $500 in wine.

(in reply to rbazinet)

Post #: 8

RE: Insuring Your Wine - 11/19/2008 9:40:14 AM

GalvezGuy

Posts: 320
Joined: 5/10/2007
From: Galveston, TX
Status: online

I have a rider with Lloyd's, it is actually pretty reasonable it covers specific losses to wine & spirits in execess of the limitation of my HO and Windstorm policies.

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If you're gonna be dumb you better be tough

(in reply to annerk)

Post #: 9

RE: Insuring Your Wine - 11/19/2008 9:43:37 AM

annerk

Posts: 252
Joined: 10/16/2008
From: Central Florida
Status: online

You know I didn't even think about the spirits. That's easily $1K right there. It's mostly for guests, as we aren't really spirits drinkers, but we do keep the liquor cabinet fully stocked.

A random thought--when our son was a teenager we had to keep it all locked up. Now that he's an adult, he really wants nothing to do with any of it. Amazing how that works, isn't it?

(in reply to GalvezGuy)

Post #: 10

RE: Insuring Your Wine - 11/19/2008 11:37:38 AM

Colonel Lawrence

Posts: 2093
Joined: 4/24/2006
From: Arabia
Status: offline

My professionally stored wine is covered by the Cellar (included in the annual per case charge (say $10).
At home I'd hope to be covered by household insurance, but I'd expect a battle.
Probably should list the wines on the policy document.
L.

(in reply to annerk)

Post #: 11

RE: Insuring Your Wine - 11/19/2008 9:57:24 PM

Hollowine

Posts: 329
Joined: 7/25/2008
From: Hood River, OR
Status: offline

So I actually met with our insurance Rep a few months ago, she is an independent insurance agent that can seek coverage from many vendors, and she didn't find anyone that would be open to insuring the cellar. I've heard that Chubb is probably the only one that does, and had also known Lloyds did it but thought it might be prohibitively expensive. I still need to work on this again, since I've had a house fire in the past and I would hate to think about losing what has taken this much time to build up. I also would want to try to get a policy that would be replace Like for Like, even if it has appreciated as so many of our wines do.

On a positive note, I showed her CT and the ability to value and track inventory and consumption and she felt it would be a wonderful proof of what was in the cellar. I figure between it and all of the archived scanned receipts/invoices that will serve the need in case of disaster.

_____________________________

Have Riedel, will travel...

(in reply to Colonel Lawrence)

Post #: 12

RE: Insuring Your Wine - 11/20/2008 8:23:25 AM

Pavie Princess

Posts: 263
Joined: 5/19/2008
From: The Big Easy, New Orleans
Status: offline

you can use a rider but we have used a special policy underwritten by Lloyd's............its not that expensive but the process was exhausting because we had to get it all appraised..........also beaware that as time goes on you must adjust your limits for drinking it or the the values of bottles going northward.............we faced both issues in 2006 and it cost us more money to get the wine covered.

(in reply to annerk)

Post #: 13