Fine Wine in the Desert: My Time So Far in Dubai

A new chapter in the desert

Cellar Advisor has been established in the UAE for three years now, and this autumn I have swapped my London desk for three months with our Dubai team. It is a chance to see up close what our colleagues here have built, and partway through my stay, it is clear why this region has become so important to us.

As Senior Portfolio Manager at Cellar Advisor, I usually work out of our London office, helping clients build and manage fine wine portfolios. Working alongside the team here, I have been struck by how curious, well-informed and fast-moving Dubai's collectors are. This post is a short reflection on what I have seen so far, and why I believe this region is ready to embrace fine wine as a serious asset class.

A wine scene that is genuinely thriving

Dubai's wine culture is even more impressive up close. Walk through DIFC on a weeknight and you will find sommelier-led wine bars pouring Grand Cru Burgundy by the glass. The hotel restaurants carry lists that would hold their own in London, Paris or Hong Kong. Private tastings and winemaker dinners fill up weeks in advance.

The city has also made wine more accessible. Dubai scrapped its 30% municipal tax on alcohol at the start of 2023 and made personal licences free. That shift brought more importers, deeper lists and a wider range of collectible bottles into the market.

What strikes me is the level of knowledge. The conversations I have here are not about which red is "nice". They are about vintage variation in Bordeaux, allocation access to top Champagne houses, and which Italian estates are gaining momentum. Dubai drinks well, and increasingly, it collects well too.

The people make the place

If the wine scene is the backdrop, the people are the story. Dubai attracts ambition like nowhere else I have worked. In a single week I have met a founder scaling a fintech across the GCC, a family-office principal thinking in generations rather than quarters, and a 29-year-old who had already built and sold her first business.

They share a mindset. They are global in outlook, unafraid of new ideas and hungry to understand how things work. They ask sharp questions and expect straight answers. For someone who loves talking about wine and investment, there is no better audience.

Fine wine for the next generation of investors

Many younger investors in the Middle East already hold equities, property and, often, some crypto. Fine wine is usually the asset they had not considered. Once we talk it through, the interest is immediate.

Part of the appeal is that fine wine is tangible. You can see it, store it and, one day, open it. Part of it is the story: each bottle carries a place, a vintage and a producer with decades or centuries of history. And part of it is simple scarcity. Once a great vintage is made, no more of it will ever exist, and every bottle opened makes the rest rarer.

My role is to make this accessible without the jargon. In practice, that means:

• Starting with education. Explaining how the secondary market works, how prices are tracked and what drives value.
• Building a sensible core. Blue-chip Bordeaux, Burgundy and Champagne with a proven trading history.
• Adding selective growth. Rising regions and producers for investors comfortable with more risk.
• Handling the logistics. Professional, bonded storage, provenance checks and insurance, so the wine is protected and its value preserved.

Excitement and stability in one asset

Fine wine offers a rare combination. It brings the excitement of a passion asset: tracking a release, securing an allocation, watching a great vintage mature. Yet it has historically behaved quite differently from stocks and bonds.

Fine wine prices have tended to show low correlation with traditional markets. They are driven more by supply, global demand and a bottle's drinking window than by daily market sentiment. Over the long term, that has made wine a useful diversifier, helping smooth a portfolio's ride when equities are volatile.

Like any investment, fine wine carries risk, and prices can move in both directions, as the softer market of recent years has shown. It rewards a long-term view, with most collections held for five to ten years or more. For most investors, wine works best as one considered part of a wider, well-diversified portfolio, built steadily with expert guidance.

For younger investors with a long horizon, that patience is an advantage. Time is exactly what fine wine rewards.

Looking ahead

Three years after Cellar Advisor established itself in the UAE, my time here has shown me just how much momentum there is behind fine wine investment in the region. The appetite is clear, the knowledge keeps growing and the next generation of investors is open to fresh ideas.

I am excited to make the most of my remaining weeks here, and to keep these conversations going from London long after I fly home. If you are in Dubai and curious about adding fine wine to your portfolio, our team here would love to hear from you. And if we can meet before I leave, the first glass is on me.

Jordan Williams-Whiting Senior Portfolio Manager, Cellar Advisor