Harpers Wine & Spirit Trade News

Fine-wine trading’s storage pitfalls

Published: 13 June, 2025

Storage is the shock absorber of the wine trade: necessary but hidden, the unglamorous element that you don’t think about until it starts to go wrong.

Profile: Octavian

Published: 14 March, 2024

Andew Catchpole heads underground to meet Octavian’s Vincent O’Brien in this extraordinary West Country storage facility.

Octavian launches customer portal, MyCellar

Published: 16 June, 2022

Octavian, the expert wine storage facility based in Wiltshire, is launching a new customer portal with a fully integrated exchange for its private customers.

At first glance, the day-to-day logistics of running a bonded warehouse is scarcely of any interest to the wider trade, let alone consumers. Regarded as a prosaic stepping stone in the overall supply chain, firms such as Berry Bros & Rudd (BBR) have been managing these “holding bays” for decades, a regulated space where imported goods that are intended for export can be stored without actually entering the UK market. Duty and VAT payments are deferred until the wine is sold or removed from the bonded warehouse. It’s that simple.