At Arden Fine Wines, clients often ask me about the “provenance” of a rare and/or high-value wine.

The point of provenance is that it is based on empirical data and provable facts.

But documented evidence that records the storage conditions of old fine wines is hardly ever available.

So is it the right question to ask about a wine’s provenance?

As Sir Arnold Robinson says to his protégé Sir Humphrey Appleby in the great BBC comedy series Yes, Minister: 

“You see, in this job the problem isn’t really finding the answers. It’s finding the questions…”

What is provenance? 

The French word “provenir”, meaning “to come from,” is the source of the English word “provenance”. 

Provenance is the chronological record of the ownership of an old, significant or valuable object.

Usually it is with regard to senescent things such as paintings, books, cars, and musical instruments.

It is a record of the possession and whereabouts of an object from the moment of its creation.

The primary purpose of tracing the provenance of an object is to provide contextual and circumstantial evidence for its original production.

Establishing its later history, especially the sequences of its formal ownership (or custody) and places of storage, accomplishes this.

Provenance and wine 

The Oxford English Dictionary defines provenance as the place of origin of something – “the fact of coming from some particular source or quarter”.

If provenance means the place of origin of something, if somebody asked me about the provenance of say, a bottle of Romanée-Conti, I could say that it originated from a winery and vineyard of that name in Vosne-Romanée, a village in the Côte-d’Or department in Bourgogne-Franche-Comté in eastern France.

A potential buyer might regard that as impertinent and evasive, even if it is an accurate and legitimate answer. 

Fundamentally provenance vis-à-vis wine encompasses three issues: ownership; storage; and authenticity. 

Wine provenance and ownership

Verifying legitimacy in owning and selling fine wines is a crucial but overlooked aspect of provenance.

Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the UK government imposed financial sanctions on some Russians who maintained residences in the UK.

Several people who appeared to represent sanctioned individuals contacted Arden Fine Wines to sell these assets – including wine. The seller ended these discussions very promptly when asked to provide proof of ownership and proof of identity.

In such instances, verifying ownership is not just an ethical requirement; it is potentially a legal requirement.

However, ownership doesn’t prove whether someone has stored wines properly or whether they’re genuine.

For example, if an auction house offers a rare and valuable bottle and the catalogue cites previous auctions at which the bottle sold, this proves nothing more than when they sold it.

But it does not prove that it is authentic.

For most older wines that come into the market, it simply was not a consideration for previous owners to keep paperwork for even the most valuable bottles.

People often move wines when ownership changes and do not keep the paperwork, or it does not survive.

It’s improbable that a bottle that is, say, 50 years old and has changed hands a few times would have receipts for transactions that someone conducted years ago.

Typically, one cannot state with certainty what the ownership history of a venerable fine wine has been.

The exception to this is where its current owner acquired it and perhaps one or two more records of its life.

Information on provenance, then, is not always attainable, even if it is desirable. 

Wine’s provenance and authenticity 

Unlike wines, old and valuable paintings, books, cars, and musical instruments usually have accompanying documents – invoices, receipts, certificates.

These provide evidence for their authenticity by tracing them back to where artisans made and first sold them.

Institutional archives often hold these documents that researchers can access.

For example, The Witt Library at The Courtauld Institute of Art in London has one of the UK’s largest holdings of art history books.

It is an important resource for researching the provenance of paintings.

But there is no wine equivalent of The Witt Library. There is no catalogue raisonné for Domaine de la Romanée-Conti or Petrus.

Wines – even Romanée-Conti or Petrus – are not valuable enough to have been worth recording in this manner. 

Wine provenance and storage (1)

Clearly, buying old wines in the marketplace carries risks without being sure of the conditions in which someone has stored them.

Nobody wants wine that has been stored poorly – too cold or too hot – because it likely gets damaged and becomes unpalatable.

Arden Fine Wines has more or less given up buying from private clients because so many of the bottles that we purchased were apparently in good condition – perfect labels and ullage.

But when they were opened by us they were often oxidised because of storage in too warm conditions for too long. 

Wine provenance and storage (2)

Somebody recently suggested to me that improper storage for even as little as a few hours could damage any given bottle of fine wine. I took the point.

But significant and meaningful damage – seepage, or a protruding cork – is conspicuous and obvious.

Also, too many buyers are not accepting the reality that old bottles have stained or part-missing labels and corroded capsules (caused by dampness and coldness – perfect for long-term wine storage) and low-lying ullage (because corks are porous and also absorb some of the wine over a long period).

Proper provenance proof for wine

If documents are unavailable – i.e. they do not exist – then one can establish the provenance of a wine from its physical details.

Over time, evidence accumulates in bottles of wine for how they have been stored.

One can look at the physical changes to which bottles are subject.

Then, one can see what these reveal about a wine’s storage history and its expected condition.

This paperwork or documentation does not reveal this, which anyone can easily forge anyway.

A convincing provenance allows the object itself to be less than convincing and still pass as the real thing.

Conclusions need proof.

The bottle, label, and capsule show the proof of a wine’s authenticity and (for the most part) its condition.

For instance, is the capsule the right colour, design and material? Is the label the right size and shape? Is the bottle the right size, shape, and colour? 

When a bottle is opened, is the cork correctly branded with the name of the wine and its vintage? Does it look correct for its age?

Are there any signs of tampering or counterfeiting, such as creased labels and capsules or a new cork in an old bottle?

“Now, what I want is, Facts…” 

Too many people are obsessed with what Henry James called (in The Sense of the Past) “evidence of a sort for which there had never been documents enough, or for which documents mainly, however multiplied, would never be enough…”

Provenance involves facts, not ideas.

In the inevitable absence of documentation, there is only one way to establish a wine’s provenance:

Look closely at the bottle itself.