Château Dernière Goutte

The Problem#

• When a wine collector dies, the family often has no idea of the cellar’s contents or value — wine is stored in cases, racks, and off-site bonded warehouses across multiple countries
• A single bottle of 1945 Romanée-Conti can be worth €25,000; a case of 1982 Lafite, €30,000 — but only if properly stored and provenance is documented
• Solicitors receive handwritten cellar books or, more often, nothing at all
• Cross-border estates with wine in France, Switzerland, and Ireland require valuations under different tax regimes, each with distinct rules on what constitutes a “chattel” vs an “investment”

How They’d Use INHERIT#

• Each wine is an asset.json entry with category: "wine_spirits" and subcategory describing the type (Bordeaux, Burgundy, Champagne, spirits)
• asset-collection.json groups the cellar as a whole, with disposalStrategy — "sell_as_collection", "sell_individually", or "dealer_bids"
• valuation.json with providerType: "dealer", method: "comparable_sales", and valuationPurpose: "date_of_death" for probate
• common/media.json attaches photographs, cellar records, and provenance documentation
• The eu-succession extension handles BrusselsIVChoiceOfLaw — determining whether French or Irish succession law governs the distribution of wine stored in Bordeaux but owned by an Irish national
• catalogue.json provides the structured inventory linking assets to published sale catalogues

The Integration#

• Bidirectional: Château Dernière Goutte imports INHERIT documents from solicitors (receiving the estate’s known assets), conducts the cellar survey, adds structured valuations and provenance, and returns the enriched document
• Multiple dealers can receive the same structured catalogue for competitive bidding

The Business Case#

• Structured cellar inventories with provenance command a 15–20% premium at auction compared to undocumented collections
• Across 40–50 estate cellars per year averaging €80,000, this represents approximately €2.1 million in additional value identified
• Brussels IV choice-of-law tracking prevents costly disputes over which jurisdiction’s forced heirship rules apply
• Eliminates the 3–5 days solicitors spend re-keying valuation reports from PDFs

Before / After#

Without INHERIT:

1. Wine collector dies in Dublin; the family knows about a cellar in the house but not 400 cases in a Bordeaux bonded warehouse
2. Three months later, the bonded warehouse contacts the executor about unpaid storage fees — the collection is discovered
3. A specialist flies to Bordeaux, spends a week cataloguing 1,200 bottles by hand, produces a 90-page PDF
4. The solicitor re-keys every value; French and Irish tax authorities each demand their own format

With INHERIT:

1. The collector’s estate plan includes an asset-collection.json referencing both cellar locations
2. On death, Château Dernière Goutte receives the structured inventory and conducts a targeted valuation
3. The enriched INHERIT document serves both tax authorities, with Brussels IV choice-of-law recorded
4. Competitive bids from three dealers are recorded in dealer-interest.json — the family gets the best price