Wine is better with company, and better still with a story. Cuvée is a club for people who would rather understand a bottle than merely own it, and who enjoy the search as much as the drinking.
Cuvée is the work of two friends who met while still at school and have spent the years since finding their own way through the wine world. Different paths, the same obsession, and a great many bottles opened along the way. What we have built together draws on all of it, and on the belief that there is still something new to be offered.
We are curators. We taste constantly, keep notes, argue amongst ourselves, and put forward only what we would happily drink again. In return we ask that you arrive curious. Behind every label is a real person: a family in Rioja, a winemaker on the Helshoogte, a grower's grandson in Alsace, and their lives are folded into the wine.
The aim is discovery, and that is why the club has two ways in. Curated Cases arrive with a theme and a point of view, chosen to lead you somewhere new. The Concierge works from the other end, beginning with what you are after and finding it, or finding you something better.
One selection rather than a warehouse list. Every bottle tasted and put forward for a reason, from grower Champagne and Burgundy premiers crus to small batch wines from places you have not yet thought about. Curated Cases group three or six of them around an idea, at less than buying singly.
The bottles that arrive in small numbers, and the releases put to members before they reach the open market. When a producer makes a few hundred cases and there is no room for them anywhere else, this is where they surface.
Each month we take a single producer and give them the space they deserve: the vineyards, the family, the decisions that made the wine, and a film from the estate itself.
A tasting in London, a dinner under a Michelin star, a week among the terraces of the Douro or the slopes of the Ribera. Small groups, host cellars, and the transfers and long lunches arranged before you arrive.
Families, estates, traditions and the occasional meal. No tasting notes and no vintage reports, just the part of wine worth knowing, told properly.
This is where we help you onto the Cuvée journey of discovery, with some of our members and founders favourite wines, and some of our best alternatives to the classic wines and regions, chosen for real value and, above all, inspiring stories. It opens with a simple question: love white Burgundy?
The classic labels that are quietly absorbed by private cellars before the open market ever sees them. When we come across a parcel we believe in, we buy it and put it to members by the case at or under the market price, with duties, taxes and delivery already included. Turnarounds are quick and allocation is strictly first come first served.
A specific bottle or vintage, an alternative to something you already love, a visit to the estate that makes it, a table worth travelling for, a retreat with friends. The concierge finds it, or finds you something better.
Hundreds of terms, from barrique to trockenbeerenauslese, across winemaking, viticulture, tasting and trade, arranged alphabetically and searchable in a second.
We learn what you love and use it as a starting point. If Burgundy is your touchstone, we will show you what its soul looks like in Mornington, in Gredos, in the volcanic soils of Etna. You will recognise it straight away.
Understanding a wine makes it taste better. So every bottle we recommend comes with the story behind it: who made it, why this vintage, and how it will change in the cellar.
We don't list every wine we can get our hands on. We list the wines that earn their place, usually because they give more pleasure per pound than anything else we've found.
Wine loves a pecking order. Bordeaux at the top, Burgundy as the last word on Pinot Noir, Champagne as the only serious fizz. The reputations are earned, but they hide a great deal.
A member who discovers that the precision they love in a Chambolle-Musigny exists equally in a Trousseau from Arbois, or that the mineral drive of their favourite Chablis is mirrored in an aged Riesling from Trimbach's Clos Sainte Hune, has found far more than a better bottle. They have learned to taste in a new way.
That is what Cuvée is for. We like meeting members, hearing what is in the glass at the moment and why, and following the taste from there. Wine has a great many facets, the bottle, the people, the food, the culture, the heritage, the places, and the pleasure is larger for all of them.
Keep your favourites, and add to them.