Cru World Wine

Always found their recommendations to be “on the money” and their communications about deliveries etc. first class

I use 3 other merchants for buying / storing / selling wine and Cru is by far the best platform on all fronts. I’ve been with them for 4-5 years now and have the lions share of my wine with them. The team (sales and service) are first rate. The level of information / education and access to a huge variety of global wines is outstanding. Highly recommend.

I have been buying wine from Cru World Wine for four years. The website and trading platform are excellent and the staff working behind the scenes are professional, helpful and reply promptly to queries. I would highly recommend them as a wine broker.

A completely professional service from first to last, great wines, great staff & great service.

Superb and trustworthy supplier - highly recommended !

Great service. On time delivery. And probably the biggest selection of wines out there. Unlike some - they tell you whether it’s available immediately or when it’s due.

Fantastic wine company and online platform. If you’re looking to by to drink then you’ll be getting the most competitive prices but Cru really steps out ahead of the other when you’re looking to trade. With live up to date prices and the ability to instantly asses and trade your portfolio, Cru World Wines provides everything you’ll ever need. This is all backed up by a team of very experienced and knowledgeable wine experts ready to advise.

Cru World Wine do a great job of offering value to their customers. They continually find highly rated, reasonably priced wine. And, their website and sales software are very easy to use.

I have bought and stored wine with them and their predecessors since the 1990s. They have always provided me with a first class service and have provided me with access to the finest French, Italian, Spanish, German and Portuguese wines. I would unhesitatingly recommend them.

I’ve been a client of Cru for several years now and am very happy with the service offered. Will and his team are always looking to offer me different wines tailored to what they think might appeal to me. Jane is very helpful when it comes to logistics, often liaising with other merchants on my behalf. Finally there is the platform where one can manage one’s portfolio effectively given the data offered. There is also a good opportunity to trade wines if that is your preference over taking delivery. In a word, highly recommended!!

It's a difficult to credit the previous 2 star rating. Like most merchants default pricing is in bond. If delivery is required duty and vat are clearly shown. I have bought and sold on Cru for about 5 years. Their software is state of the art and support from Tom and Jane is excellent. Cash payments on sales are always promptly made. Pretty near perfect.

I have had a consistently excellent experience with Cru spanning 4 - 5 years. I have used multiple other (highly reputable) wine companies in my time and certainly for my purposes Cru has consistently been head and shoulders above the rest. Wine is all about buying opportunistically and the allocations / recommendations / prices / timing and what Cru provides is second to none meaning I have been able to secure exceptional drinking wines at great value and the investment wines have on average performed well. Even my drinking wines are on average up 30% after a few months… Lastly, they have a very good platform, it is easy to sell direct from your portfolio. Highly recommended

Surprised to see an average revue here. I’ve found their range of wines to be unquestionably world class and their service efficient and effective.

Always had great service with competitive pricing. State of the art trading tech too if you want to buy and sell. Well curated offerings.

I have been ordering from Cru World Wine almost since they started. I have never had a poor experience and their new App is awesome for account management. The London team have always answered any questions I have had promptly. I would definitely recommend!

Made my first order of wine and just had it land in my account ready for delivery. What they don’t make really clear during the order process is on top of price you have to pay duty, tax and extra delivery. What they should do show you is the tax and duty calculation if it’s excluded. In my case a £195 order had ~40% added to it to get it to me. It’s in the T&Cs to be fair but where it’s excluded ive always had (via other companies) the identification of what fees and duties would be payable if delivered. That’s done really clearly up front as part of order process (not rely on T&C). Be sure to check the additional taxes, duty and delivery fees before you order.

I started buying wine on Cru World Wine in 2016 and have never looked back. It's a perfect combination of a wine wholesaler plus 'interactive broker of fine wines.' Great sales people, great people in logistics (thanks a lot Jane H.) and a lot of valuable research. I'm loving it!

I bought a case of 6 Pessac-Leognan Blanc 2009 from these guys. It arrived 5 weeks late and with a high additional local delivery charge, but in apparently good order. However, when I opened the first bottle a couple of weeks later, there was mould on the cork, the colour of the wine was dark and it tasted extremely acidic and unpleasant. A second bottle looked and tasted fine (7/10), although it too had a mouldy cork. This was a wine and vintage I knew well, and had ordered before from other suppliers with no issues of quality. It seemed to me that the wine had probably been poorly stored so I wrote to ask what their policy was in such cases. They replied, asking for photos which I supplied. These showed the mouldy corks and how the colour of the "off" wine compared with that of the better one. Their response was to say that "Well, it's old white wine and you get uneven ageing, but we've been assured by our trusted suppliers that it's been stored well." I wrote back asking how they could know how a 13 year old case of wine had been stored throughout its history? Also, as they are a brokerage and this was a marketplace order, how could their trusted supplier know how it had been kept? I acknowledged that wine of any type or colour can age variably, but white Pessac-Leognan has considerable longevity, much greater, for instance, than most white Burgundy's. Good ones (which this was) can improve up to 20 years and then some (I've heard - though never experienced - up to 40 years for the very best). Their response was simply to repeat that they had been told about the storage by their "trusted supplier" (no name or details given) and anyway, they weren't liable for any spoilage or quality issues AT ALL for any reason, as shown in the T&Cs which they kindly pasted into the email. They did offer me a discount on my next order, but when I asked what this might be, I was told it would depend on the order. "We sold you a lame horse this time which we're not going to do anything about, but we'll give you an unspecified discount on the next one," seems to me to be a pretty abysmal sales pitch, on many levels, to say nothing of demonstrating a pretty low estimation of their customers' intelligence, so I won't be buying anything from these guys ever again. Of course, wine is a perishable commodity and there is a discussion to be had as to what constitutes acceptable quality, but mouldy corks and one £65 bottle out of 6 (so far) undrinkable I would say is at least grounds for some kind of compromise. On the rare occasions when I've had to return a bottle of corked wine, most merchants are only too happy to give you a refund or replacement, and as a result, they've gotten more of my business. Just because something is in your T&Cs doesn't make it fair or ethical, nor does it make it good practice. Refusing to take responsibility for selling spoiled or sub-standard goods is not only appalling practice, it's dishonest. I'm sick of modern businesses (particularly online) that prioritise profit over customer satisfaction and this is just one more. I'm not a big customer for them by any means, (I have bought from them once before and it was fine) but this wine wasn't cheap. Perhaps treating customers like this, they can afford to throw expensive wine down the sink if it's corked or spoiled, but I can't. Most companies treat their high-rollers well, at least if they want to stay in business, but the way they treat their smaller customers is how you get their true measure; these guys couldn't care less. Maybe if you're buying and selling wine for investment, it's conceivable that they're ok (though I doubt it), but if you're buying wine to drink, there are far better companies around who actually give a toss about their customers, rather than just their customers' money.

The website looks slick and professional, and they make it very easy to spend money with them. Unfortunately, the service which backs this up is very poor. I transferred two cases of wine to Cru from another merchant at the start of November. When the wines did not arrive after a couple of weeks, I queried the transfer with Cru, who asked for proof of delivery. I provided them with this, but six weeks later the wines still haven't appeared in my account. The only response I have had is "we have a huge backlog for landings at our new warehouse currently. We are moving over 40,000 cases... We are doing our utmost to get everything sorted". Meanwhile, the company has over £1,200 worth of my wine which they appear to have lost. I still don't know if this is utter incompetence or some kind of scam. The more time that goes on the more I am inclined to believe the latter. My only advice is to avoid this company entirely. Update: The wines have now arrived in my account and Cru arranged for someone from their storage provider to call me and explain the reason for the delay. I'm afraid I only feel able to make it three stars because I was still waiting more than six weeks for a simple transfer. But they did go out of their way to apologise and restore my confidence in the service.

Redeeming client service