European Business Magazine Interviews OenoGroup Founders Michael Doerr and Daniel Walker

The award winning wine investment group based in the heart of London city about their journey so far and what the major challenges that they have overseen , the industry that they are involved in and how they see the future of their company and their goal to be more transparent in an industry which has been rife with shady firms trying to make a quick buck

Let’s start from the beginning. Oeno Group was founded back in 2015 by an Italian wine expert Daniel Carnio. A few years later, you purchased the business and completely adapted the company and successfully increased turnover. Tell us more: why did you both decide to start this company, what vision did you have in mind?

And what is the story behind you purchasing the Group? What was the biggest challenge that you had to overcome once you started working here?

MD: The company that Daniel Carnio founded in 2015 is not the company that it is today. It was a totally different company. My business partner Daniel Walker and I sat down together and discussed how we love the concept of fine wine and we had an idea of fine wine as an investment. We put together a whole group to incorporate three arms of its service offering to facilitate a higher degree of excellence in each department from trade to investment to consumption. For us, it is the only true full 360-degree circle asset from collector-to-investor-to-consumer. There could be two people in a chain or two thousand people in a chain: as long as someone consumes that wine in the end, you have a wholly ethical investment cycle. DW: Creating Oeno Group as a full service offering was a way for us to bring an esoteric luxury concept like wine investment to the wider masses. If we look back 10 years, wine investment was seen as a luxury investment only for those who knew about wine and had large amounts of wealth. MD: With Oeno Group, we made wine investment accessible to the masses. What was once looked upon as only an investment for the elite for people such as Warren Buffet and Alex Ferguson, we revolutionised the very concept of wine investment to make it simple and more accessible for individuals interested in wine. Because both Daniel Walker and I don’t come from a strong wine background, we both brought an untainted view to the industry: introducing wine investment to all walks of life. DW: Although we still maintain that exclusivity, we make wine investment more accessible by opening our doors to those who don’t have the experience or knowledge about wines. We are probably the first company to do this in such a welcoming way. MD: We love the stories behind the wines and the winemakers. We enjoy being storytellers that engage wine investors with the heritage of great wines. The difference between spending £20 on a bottle of wine and spending £20,000 on a bottle of wine can be the story behind the wine. Penfold’s Grange came from a young man who made wine in a unique way and was shunned by his peers. Penfold’s is now widely considered the greatest wine Australia has ever produced and, to some, one of the greatest wines in the world.

Today, Oeno Group is known as “the top wine investment firm “. Looking back, was it difficult to gain such status? What was the tipping point for the company, when you knew that things are about to unwind?

MD: We were slugging away for years and it was tough. We wanted to make the greatest rarest fine wine portfolio the world has ever seen. We are trying to offer a near-perfect service whether you are an experienced collector or have just had your first glass of wine, we aim to please all walks of life. We wanted to be an honest, upfront, and approachable company. DW: Our ultimate goal was to take a company that was already good with so many benefits and positive attributes. We saw the flaws and gaps in the business and wanted to turn it around and make all aspects of it as perfect as possible. DW: When we first started this company ourselves, we thought about our own family members and how we could make wine investment as simplistic, streamlined, and approachable as possible. With the greatest things in life, when you take something that’s complicated and make it simple, you know you are doing something well. MD: Oeno Group is the only wine investment firm worldwide that has active exit strategies with clients. Oeno Group has a retail arm that sells wine that is 70% client-owned. We also have a trade arm and we sell wine to some of the top Michelin star restaurants and members clubs in London from Annabel’s, 67 Pall Mall, City Social, Park Chinois, L’Enclume, Cinnamon Club, Guards Polo Club and more. We are one of the only companies that has a dedicated in-house anti-fraud team that has a 60-point anti-fraud checking system. After our team verifies a wine bottle’s authenticity, we adorn the bottles with a hologram label that cannot be removed. DW: If someone comes to us and wants to know why we think Oeno Group is the greatest wine company to exist, they have the absolute

right to have the top service which includes having an irrefutable guarantee of authenticity. That means when it is time to sell your wine, you can demand a premium which we guarantee as a company. DW: We are a multi-award winning company. We have been voted Europe’s Best Fine Wine Investment Company two years in a row which makes us the first company to achieve that. We’ve won Best Alternative Investment and Best Global Wine Investment Company. When your peers and competitors acknowledge that you are doing something completely different, that’s when the penny drops and we felt like we were doing something right.

Oeno Group advises both experienced wine investors and novices of all ages on which wines to invest in. Tell us a bit more about what it’s like to work with so many different clients?

DW: It’s fantastic to work with so many different types of clients from a vast demographic. We get approached by around 600 individuals per week with about 75 people per month who will become our clients. We have injected a level of energy and innovativeness into the wine market that has attracted so many different interested individuals. MD: With us, you have a dedicated account manager specific to different regions of the world. I know that a ton

of our clients have a great relationship with their personal account managers as I have met with many of our clients personally. DW: We have created an environment where our clients know that they are speaking to a dedicated account manager for a very specific reason to suit their individual needs.

Oeno Group has offices all over the world — from New York, Madrid, Bordeaux to Munich. What is more, during the Covid19 pandemic, in January 2021, the company opened new offices in Spain and Portugal.

What was it like to extend the business during the pandemic? What were the biggest challenges at that time?

MB: Everyone said to us, was it a risk to extend the business during the pandemic. We actually saw it as an opportunity. DW: During the pandemic, so many people were losing everything they had from FTSE 250 to S&P 500 companies that were going under. Fine wines always had this characteristic of staying strong and robust, even whilst the economy was fragile. We thought, if we remained strong, we would flourish. We saw a big change in the type of people who approached us during COVID, such as more professional investors looking at Oeno Group as a capital preservation tool. It went from a luxury to a total necessity. Even when Brexit was announced, sterling fell to a 23-year low but wine saw a spike of 47.2%, with a particular rise in California.

In your opinion, what are the most important things and features that make the Oeno Group stand out from the crowd?

MD: We have a mindset that we can do everything. One of our biggest

achievements in our delivered experiences was a huge 12-hour day of wine tasting for hundreds of top decision makers in the trade industry joined by an array of winemakers who flew into London for the event. Our in-house experts like Master of Wine Justin Knock, Head of Trade Olivier Gasselin, and Head of Buying and Rare Wines Mattia Tabacco were there hosting food pairings and wine tastings from Screaming Eagle, Liber Pater, Penfold’s and Soldera to name a few. We showcased an oyster bar, offered Rolls Royce chauffeurs, and had a live DJ at Tower 42, which is the whole floor atop a 600 ft skyscraper in the clouds of the city of London. MD: As the number 1 wine investment company in Italy, we also put on a large wine tasting event during the Venice Film Festival with over 30 wine experts and the greatest Italian wines to taste.

Oeno Group is also the very first wine investment company to have a dedicated in-house AntiFraud Unit. Tell us more about a stringent certification process and how did the company end up creating such a unit?

MD: We knew we could buy the stock from the vineyards but if we couldn’t find a special bottle and couldn’t go direct, we wanted to know we could protect our clients with guarantee of authenticity hence why we decided to have an in-house Anti-Fraud Unit. We came up with a very detailed stringent process to authenticate each bottle of wine then affix a hologram label on each verified bottle. We are setting the standard for the industry so that, hopefully one day, everyone will do detailed checks to authenticate wine as we are doing. DW: We feel a total obligation as a company that, if someone decides we are the company for them, we have the duty to make sure that our clients are happy from start to finish. We take it upon ourselves to be a ground-breaking company, spearheading the industry to give our trusted seal of approval. Our team have created an actual label that is fixed on each bottle after it successfully goes through the anti-fraud checks. You wouldn’t buy a Rolex without paperwork so you wouldn’t buy a bottle of wine without our stamp of approval.

7. Tell us a bit more about Oeno’s exclusive client-only app, which was supposed to launch in the late Summer of 2021. What is the main idea behind it?

Are there any newer projects coming soon that you’re particularly excited about?

MD: Due to launch later this year, the Oeno Group app is a natural progression of where we are going. These days, not everyone has time to speak with their account manager. One of our clients may be laying in bed on Christmas Eve and they may be curious about their wine portfolio – they can log into their app and view their wine portfolio performance. The app will be a way for Oeno Group to be there whenever clients want to view their portfolio progress with notifications of special offers, tastings, or events. DW: The app will give clients autonomy and an interactive relationship with us. The app will give clients more control of viewing their wine portfolio with a click of a button anytime they want.

Let’s talk about the future.

How do you think Oeno House will look in 5, 10 years from now?

And the whole wine market — although since 2005 fine wine has seen the growth of 198%, making it a very attractive safe haven for investors keen to diversify their portfolio — what it will look like?

DW: We move at warp speed. Look at where we were and look at where we are now. We do things differently and like to shake things up. We are happy to work with vineyards that are not on the global scale. There are great wines in China and Lebanon and, if the wine is good, we are happy to bring this to our client base. In 5 years, I can imagine we will be bigger, better, faster with a greater service and we will be more streamlined. MB: We put our clients first. We always have our goals in place and we will be ready to adapt to our clients’ needs and market needs’ as we progress over the next five years.

Oeno Group

https://oenogroup.com/

Oeno House

https://oenogroup.com/house/