Palm Beach · Jupiter · Boca Raton · Fort Lauderdale · Miami · Naples
I appraise private wine collections across South Florida and deliver a signed, USPAP-compliant written valuation your insurer, your executor, the IRS, or a court can rely on. I come to the wine, count and condition it myself, reconcile a second cellar against the first if there is one, research the market, and write the report. Two to three weeks, a flat fee agreed in advance, and no interest in what you do with the collection afterwards.
From $1,400
USPAP-compliant, signed
Post-outage condition
Where I work
No travel charge from Palm Beach through Miami. Naples and the Gulf side are quoted at cost in the engagement letter, never buried in the fee.
Island houses and the wine rooms behind them. Most of these collections were assembled somewhere else and shipped down, which makes provenance the first question rather than the last.
Newer houses, newer cellars, and a fair number of collections still in their original cases. Easy mornings, and often the first appraisal the owner has ever commissioned.
Condominium storage and club lockers as often as home cellars. Where the wine sits in three places, the report says so, lot by lot.
Waterfront houses, and the occasional yacht cellar — which has its own condition profile and gets recorded separately.
The busiest of the southern stops. Miami collections skew younger and move faster, so the drinking-window picture matters as much as the valuation.
By arrangement, on the same terms. The drive across is quoted at cost, and I try to pair it with another Gulf-side visit.
Seasonal residents
Most of the collections I see down here belong to people who are north of the Mason-Dixon line for six months. Nobody is in the house when the wine has its worst week. An appraisal that happens while you are in residence is worth scheduling deliberately rather than squeezing in.
A second cellar is where double-counting lives: bottles logged in both places, cases shipped south and never struck off the northern list, and an insurance schedule that reflects neither. One reconciled inventory across both addresses usually changes the total in one direction or the other, sometimes sharply.
A collection shipped from a northern cellar has a transit history, and transit is where condition quietly goes. I read fills, capsules, and labels against the shipping records where they exist, and note where they do not.
Hurricane season
This is the part of a Florida appraisal that has no northern equivalent. A cellar loses power, the house is empty, and by the time anyone opens the door the collection has already had the week that mattered. What you need afterwards is a written record of condition — and what you needed beforehand was a written record of value.
A current inventory and a current valuation are the two things nobody can assemble after a storm. If a claim ever has to be made, the evidence has to predate the event — that is the whole reason to do this in June rather than October.
Heat is the risk, not wind. A cellar without power in August loses condition in hours, not days. I inspect for the specific signs: pushed corks and raised capsules, seepage at the neck, label staining, changes in fill. Each is photographed and recorded against the inventory line.
A written condition assessment stating what I found, what I did not, and the effect on value against the pre-event figure where a prior appraisal exists. It is written so an adjuster can work from it. It is not a claim and it is not an opinion on coverage — those belong to you and your carrier.
I am not a public adjuster and I do not negotiate claims. I establish condition and value, in writing, with photographs. That is the piece the rest of the process is usually missing.
Florida questions
Nothing here is tax, legal, or insurance advice. Coverage questions belong to your carrier and your broker; I establish condition and value in writing so they have something to work from.
A signed, USPAP-compliant written valuation starts from $1,400. The fee is flat or hourly, quoted in the engagement letter before I start, and set by bottle count, the number of locations, and how much research the significant lots need. USPAP prohibits an appraiser from charging a percentage of the value reported, so my fee never moves with the number in the report.
Palm Beach, West Palm Beach, Jupiter, Boca Raton, Fort Lauderdale, and Miami as a matter of course, with no travel charge. Naples is served by arrangement, with the drive quoted at cost. Anywhere further is quoted the same way — at cost, in writing, before anything is booked.
While you are in residence, and ideally before hurricane season rather than after it. A valuation and inventory dated before an event is the document that matters if a claim is ever made; one assembled afterwards is reconstruction. If you keep cellars in two states, we can plan one engagement that covers both.
Yes. I inspect for heat exposure — pushed corks, raised capsules, seepage, label staining, changed fill levels — and write a condition assessment with photographs, recorded against each inventory line and measured against the pre-event value where a prior appraisal exists. It is written for an adjuster to work from. I am not a public adjuster and do not negotiate the claim itself.
To schedule it, in almost every case yes. Wine sits inside your general contents limit until it is scheduled, and that limit is rarely written with a serious cellar in mind — a point that matters more here than most places, given the loss profile. Carriers differ on how recent the valuation must be, so ask yours before commissioning the work.
Yes, and it is the common case in Palm Beach. One engagement, one reconciled inventory, one report, with every lot recorded against the address it actually sits in. That reconciliation is frequently the most useful part of the exercise, independent of the valuation.
Generally two to three weeks from inspection to signed report. The inspection itself is a morning for a few hundred bottles and a day or two for a collection across several addresses. If you are working to a closing, a filing, or a departure date, say so on the first call and I will sequence around it.
Never. Clients pay Prestige Vin directly and nobody else pays us anything — no retailer margin, no consignment share, no referral fees. If the collection should be sold, that goes in the report as a recommendation, naming the houses I would approach and what each would cost you. Where an estate needs the whole question resolved rather than only valued, that is Estate Triage, from $2,100.
Scheduled around the season, and around you
Roughly how many bottles, which houses, and what the appraisal is for. Thirty minutes on the phone is usually enough to tell you whether a formal report is worth commissioning at all.