Six bases of value, because four people want four different numbers.
An insurer wants retail replacement. A buyer wants fair market. An executor wants a figure at a date of death. A bank wants ninety-day liquidation. Cellar Valuation carries all six at once, shows the working on every lot with comparables by venue and date, and prints a document an appraiser can review and sign. From $750.
What the house paid. A book number, useful for GP and useless to an adjuster.
Fair market
Willing buyer, willing seller, neither compelled. The default, and what a buyer will argue from.
Retail replacement
Buying it again today, including the friction. Higher than fair market for a reason.
Insured value
What a scheduled policy pays on. Under-insure and you find out at claim; over-insure and you pay a premium every year for nothing.
Auction net
Expected hammer less seller commission. Ninety days to cash, and the number a bank will lend against.
Merchant net
A dealer taking the block outright. Immediate cash, no upside, and they will cherry-pick if you let them.
How a lot value is actually built
This is the part most valuations do not show, and it is the part an appraiser checks first. The order matters, because it is the order the document prints.
A 750ml market referenceWith its source, its comparable count and its as-of date. No reference means the lot is carried at cost and excluded from every market total.
FormatHalf at 0.45, bottle at 1.00, magnum at 2.15, double magnum at 4.60, imperial at 9.80. A magnum is worth more than two bottles and any pricing that treats it as two is wrong.
ConditionPristine 1.00, sound 0.94, marked 0.82, suspect 0.60. Suspect means taste it before you value it or sell it.
ProvenanceEx-domaine 1.08, ex-maison 1.06, allocation 1.05, trade 1.00, unknown 0.88. An unknown chain costs twelve percent, which is why provenance is worth recording at receiving rather than reconstructing later.
Original wooden caseA further 1.05, multiplicative. OWC matters and it matters more the further up the cellar you go.
Outside the house service windowCarried at fifty-five percent of adjusted market until somebody opens one and tastes it.
The floor it will not go below
Evidence coverage under eighty percent and the appraisal will not certify, regardless of who is willing to sign. The document states that on its face with the coverage figure and the reason.
That refusal is the product. An appraisal that quietly presents a total over thin evidence is the one that gets challenged, and the challenge lands on whoever signed it.
80% evidence coverage
Source: Aivin methodology, the floor below which a valuation will not certify
Questions people ask first
How much does a wine cellar valuation cost?
Nobody in this category will give me a number.
From $750 for a cellar under 400 lots, and $375 to re-certify against a new effective date. Published, not quoted. Larger cellars scale by lot count on the same scale. An outside appraiser runs $2,500 to $6,000 and rebuilds the schedule from scratch every time, because nobody kept the working from the last one.
Can software appraise a wine cellar?
An appraisal is a professional opinion. You cannot automate that.
No, and Aivin does not claim to. The opinion is an appraiser’s and the signature carries their credential. What Aivin removes is the fortnight underneath it: pulling comparables by venue and date, applying format and condition adjustments, and grading the evidence lot by lot. Unsigned, the document states on its own face that it is appraisal support.
What happens to bottles you cannot find a market price for?
Half my Jura has never traded anywhere.
Carried at cost, excluded from every market total, and listed as unresolved on the face of the appraisal. Aivin will not interpolate from a neighbouring vintage or a producer average to make a cellar look complete. An estimate with no comparable behind it is the number that collapses the first time an adjuster tests it.
