The Wine Room has launched The Wine Room Reserve, a private members’ wine platform built on the subterranean cellars beneath its College Hill premises. The Reserve is the second phase of the cellar business, aimed at collectors who want an investment-grade cellar without the access, the time or the expertise to assemble one. Under the membership, allocation-only wines are secured on members’ behalf, cellaring is included in the monthly fee, and every bottle is owned outright by the member.
The facility, which opened nearly two years ago, comprises over 450 individual subterranean cellars held at a constant 12–14°C and 65–75% humidity, with low light and minimal vibration, 24-hour CCTV, individual access codes, alarmed units and insurance.
Members have access 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. The Wine Room describes it as the first facility of its kind in New Zealand. Membership operates across three levels: Reserve at $600 a month, Collector at $1,750 a month, and a Founder Circle tier by invitation from $5,500 a month. In each case the majority of the fee is a wine allocation. Cellaring across the first three tiers of cellars is absorbed into the membership fee. The Reserve is not an investment scheme: members own each bottle outright, and no financial return is promised or implied.
“The cellars were never the total business. They were the foundation for the community and culture we wanted to build,” said David Nash, founder of The Wine Room. “There are over 450 of them under the building because you cannot run a wine platform without somewhere to put the wine, and we spent two years proving the hard part worked before we announced the rest of it. Many serious collections in this country sit in a bonded warehouse in another city or a cold store in a hard-to-access location, behind a form and a fortnight’s notice.
"Ours sit beneath The College Hill Wine Room.”“We use a fund manager to help us invest and a buyer’s agent to find a house, and nobody thinks twice about either,” Nash said. “Yet we come across clients spending twenty to one hundred thousand dollars a year on wine with no representation at all, buying what they happen to be offered rather than what they should be spreading and holding. The Reserve becomes your person in the room who knows what to ask for, how to get it and where to get it from.”
The Reserve Cellar has been stocked deliberately since the facility opened, against a membership that had not yet been announced. It holds wines from producers including Domaine de la Romanée-Conti, Pétrus, Sassicaia, Jamet, Fourrier, Henschke, Penfolds, Felton Road and Kumeu River. Members receive first sight of parcels and releases secured for the membership, an online inventory of their holdings, no corkage on their own wines when dining at The Wine Room, and, from later in 2026, the option to resell through The Reserve’s secondary market.
Membership is limited and by application. Applications are open at thewineroom.nz.
