One is really best off to get the whole package (including homeowners) from one carrier. Chubb, Pure, and a couple other do this. It is hard to do one off and then I always worry about the actual coverage when needed. As noted above Chubb is great on a claim. I have used Chubb and now use Pure who is also great on a claim. With insurance do not shop just by price as then when you have a claim you will find out why they are the cheapest.
Perfect example of how cheap can turn out to be VERY expensive. Safe Harbour Wine Storage offers to insure wines held at its facility, for just $30 per month, apparently regardless of appraised value. Let us see if Safe Harbour Wine Storage will honor some upcoming theft claims.
When I was getting homeowners insurance quotes last year, Chubb would only cover my wine if I had a full policy with them, and not a stand alone for the wine.
AIG is a stand alone policy for my cellar. Chubb wanted everything under one umbrella and I wasnāt willing to do that.
My only claim with Amwins was a single bottle of high-end Bordeaux that broke during a move a couple of years ago, super easy and fast claim process. Just a small fraction of Jimās claim, but it was comforting to see how easy the claim process was with Amwins after being a longtime customer.
I just switched to Pure after 30 years with Chubb, and that was just because, after my recent retirement, I reassessed how much I was paying for insurance and my agent, Marsh, put it out to bid among the few companies they deal with that only handle high net worth policies. Pure, apparently started by some former Chubb people, came in several thousand less for identical coverage for package of 2 homes and auto. In either case, the wine is a scheduled blanket (not listing individual bottles) coverage with both companies, and as such is not subject to the homeowners deductible just like scheduled jewelry, and is covered for breakage, fire, earthquake, theft, etc. (with a $75K per bottle limitā¦believe me, I did not ask for that, it is just part of it). I do not know what part of the total premium is for the wine coverage, as my agent and I were simply comparing Pure vs. Chubb for the exact same coverage I have had. No idea whether eithe Chubb or Pure writes coverage separately for wine if your homeowners is not with them.
I donāt claim to be an insurance expert but I believe āscheduled blanketā may be an oxymoron. I think scheduled means each bottle is listed individually, perhaps even with a stated value. Blanket I think means there is coverage for the whole category of wine.
I have been buying stand alone wine insurance for many years and have used several companies because rarely does one company with good coverage offer the same thing year in and year out. Five years seems about right. My experience is that policy terms are extremely important and vary from company to company. Items to consider include whether wine is covered at market or replacement value, how market value is defined (if at all), and whether there is coverage/exclusion for utility outages or mechanical breakdown of cooling equipment.
Those who insure with Chubb seem to like it. I donāt know about their coverage because they wonāt insure my part of town on the basis weāre too close to an EQ fault.
Timely thread. In a prior thread on this topic(there are at least 2 that I recall)someone mentioned coverage through State Farm, who presumably provides their homeowners insurance also. After several exchanges with my agent (and, indirectly, the home office) I get the distinct impression that Iām going to have to look elsewhere.
Just within the last several weeks, I have seen advertisements in an online wine periodical for a company called Kelly Klee. Is anyone familiar with them?
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I am going to have to check out some of these other places. AIG wanted me to switch all of my coverage to them. This is more frustrating since others havenāt had to, to get coverage. Chubb was attached to another local company in Portland I had never heard of before inquiring. For some reason I thought Chubb was their own company. Eventually I might have to change everything over, but I have been with the same agent for 30 years and have had great customer service for my home, auto and business.
Does anyone have their wine insured through Amica? They have great customer service, but I donāt know if they do wine.
Phil Jones
I may have misused the word blanket. It is insured as a scheduled collection, the individual bottle limit is $75K
Nationwide Private Client (ex Crestfield) does dedicated collectibles policies that include wine and challenges specific to wine (e.g. cooling unit failure). I canāt speak to their claims service, however.
I really donāt follow the logic of the bolded part. A 2000 bottle cellar can easily top $100K in value and doesnāt have to have any bottles over $100 to do so. Sure many who have cellars of that value will have expensive bottles but its by no means a requirement to hit those valuations. And when you have a large cellar of moderately priced wine, the cost/return scenarios get different unless you have a fear of a situation that impacts oneās entire cellar at once.
I think the question of insurance is what you are guarding against and how much are you willing to spend versus how much you may lose. When the yearly cost exceeds the most expensive bottle value by over 2X, then insurace for dropage of a single bottle makes no sense and its only for issues such as long-term power outage of an actively cooled cellar in a hot climate. My passive cellar without trophy bottles, which survived the only earthquake of the past few decades without a single bottle damaged, makes no sense to insure.
Which is costlier to replace, a $100,000 wine collection with trophy bottles, or a $100,000 wine collection without trophy bottles?
My point was peace of mind costs about one or two good bottles of wine per year. I live in Southern California and climate is a worry. Three years ago, just 48 hours before I left for a two week vacation in September (when temps were 90 degrees or more outside), my cooling unit failed. I got a replacement in before I left. Had it died just a couple of days later I would have lost $75K or so. We also have earthquakes. I donāt buy insurance for a dropped bottle. I buy it for the catastrophic loss of my cellar that my normal homeownerās policy does not cover.
Maybe you donāt need this in your area for these reasons. I think I do.
witih all due respect your assessment is not fair either. Insurance is about probability of hazard. Not at all āiād imagine a fire, theft earthquake will affect a larger percentageā¦ā Wine does not move, it cannot cause a damage to someone, it wont break. IT JUST SITS THERE. Insuring something that JUST SITS THERE should in theory be the cheapest peril to assure hands down. The above comparison to homeowners insurance is valid. A home has much more liability to it. people are walking in and out constantly. And since you mentioned artwork, The CEO of PURE insurance company (insurer to the wealthy) was asked about how they insure artwork and he said it always starts with where is it stored. Is it in a vault? a museum? is it on your front porch? the more CHANCES of peril, the higher the risk. I will say againā¦ WINE JUST SITS THERE. 1% or 2% premium cost is outrageous when framed in a risk/peril grid. Yet we pay itā¦ its probably just a gouging of the customer that will go on until disrupted. These ineficiences can last foreverā¦ just look at mortgage Title Insurance.
Because there are so few large wine collections the risk cannot be quantified easily so insurers charge more to cover for said lack of knowledge. Ideally if there were millions of wine collections, rates would be adjusted by climate, by cooling solution, and so on. I am confident that Iāve reduced the risk of total loss of my collection to near-zero, only being vulnerable to catastrophic fire. If that happens, well, Iāll take it as a sign from Cthulhu and stick to everyday winesā¦
Sitting somewhere can still entail risk. Look at what happened at Mare island, or at Safe Harbour Wine Storage.
Cmon Victor youāre smarter than thatā¦ you want to compare insurance cost for bottles held a private residence vs a commercial location/facility? Okay you are an insurer of artwork there are two identical pieces of art one is stored in the owners basementā¦ the other is stored in the warehouse on an open shelf where he has 25 employess moving around every day. Same rate? definitely not.