ASSET CLASS

Investing in fine wine just got easier with Vinovest.

Investing in fine wine just got a lot easier with Vinovest.

At just 25, American entrepreneur Anthony Zhang has already founded and sold two companies – Envoynow, an intracollege food delivery service, and Know Your VC, a review platform for venture capitalists and angel investors. His third and latest, an online wine investment platform called Vinovest, might be his largest project yet. That’s because Vinovest fills a previously untapped niche: wine investments for the retail investor.

While these traditionally involve large amounts of money, personal relationships with brokers and dealing with storage logistics, Vinovest takes all three out of the equation. Driven by technology and a team of industry professionals that includes several master sommeliers, the platform allows entry into the fine wine investment market – one that, according to Vinovest, has consistently outperformed the S&P 500 over the past 30 years – and for as low as US$1,000 (S$1,300).

What inspired you to create Vinovest?

I was trying to invest in wine myself about five years ago and I realised that unless you are wealthy or born into the wine industry, it’s tough for a newcomer to invest in wine. It’s hard to get connections to the right brokers and highend auctions. Wine storage – if you didn’t own a cellar – was also expensive and insurance, very confusing. It just didn’t sit right with me that this high performing asset class was only available to the wealthy. I wanted to create a solution for myself and for others like me who were new to this world.