Wine Matcher is an award-winning web-based tool for the fine wine trade. Using it, you can clean and price up to 5,000 lines of data per minute. You can find out more about it here.
Cru World Wine is a global fine wine merchant headquartered in London. Like all merchants, Cru receives wine lists from private clients, negociants and other members of the trade, which they use to source buying opportunities. We spoke with Fine Wine Trader Will Winterton to find out how he and his team have been using Liv-ex’s Wine Matcher to sort through lists and act on opportunities faster.
Before Wine Matcher
Each week, the team receives many lists from private clients and the trade. Some of these are very long, containing hundreds of wines.
Valuation data is needed to help inform Cru’s offers. Private client lists need to be fully valued. Professional lists, which come with prices, need to be checked against the market to help identify individual opportunities.
“It used to be a manual process”, Winterton says, which required him to type in and check every single wine. Due to the volume and length of lists coming through, it wasn’t always possible to check through all of them thoroughly.
Getting started with Wine Matcher
Wine Matcher is a browser-based tool, which means that no development is required to get started. All you need to do is log in. Cru were given a demo by their Account Manager and began using it shortly after. “It’s easy to use”, according to Winterton.
After Wine Matcher
The team at Cru now uploads lists to Wine Matcher, which then returns the Market Price, current bid and offer, and last trade price of each wine. This information helps them to value lists and spot buying opportunities, automating a process that used to be manual.
“I can save a couple of hours on a big list, but it’s not just about saving time. It means that I can look at more lists than I could before – more offers, from more people”, says Winterton.
“When it comes to private clients, we’re now able to respond much more quickly. This is important because private clients are an excellent source of aged wine, and it’s rare that we’re the only merchant receiving their list. Everyone will go back with a roughly similar bid, so responding quickly gives us an advantage. It’s more professional.”
“It also helps us make a more accurate bid. We download the last trade, current bid and offer, and Market Prices of each wine. The more data I have at my disposal – particularly transactional prices – the more confident I am. It’s a more informed decision”
LWIN Matching
Cru uses LWIN, the Liv-ex Wine Identification Number(s), in place of product codes. Wine Matcher can be used to quickly match lists of wines to LWIN.
“If we are adding a large number of wines to the system, we use Wine Matcher. It allows us to quickly standardise the list, making the upload faster. It reduces admin time.”
