Inside Rue Pinard: Opening the World’s Cellar

In a private cellar in Miami, lined with bonded cases of Cognac and Burgundy, Rue Pinard’s founders sit with the calm assurance of men who move history across borders. Their business is not just about bottles, but about trust, provenance, and access to the world’s most elusive wines and spirits.

Q: Rue Pinard is often described as a gateway. What do you actually open the door to?

Bart Laming: Access, plain and simple. The rarest bottles in the world usually never leave their local allocations. If you’re a restaurant in Amsterdam or a collector in Singapore, good luck trying to find a case of top Burgundy or an old Cognac. We wanted to change that.

Hakan Karaca: By joining Liv-ex, we stepped into a network of more than 620 international merchants. That network offers over 20,000 wines and spirits in real time, with more than £100 million in live trading opportunities. But what really matters is what we do with it: we take a market built on scarcity and opacity, and we make it transparent, liquid, and personal.

Q: What’s the frustration most collectors or restaurants face?

Bart: Scarcity is the obvious one. The best wines are rationed out, and unless you’ve been buying from a domaine for thirty years, you don’t stand a chance.

Hakan: Even if you do get an allocation, the system is murky. Pricing lacks transparency — middlemen make the rules, and buyers are often left guessing if they’re overpaying.

Bart: Then there’s provenance. Everyone fears fakes, bad storage, or not knowing exactly where a bottle has been. For restaurants, the big problem is continuity. You might feature a magical 2005 Bordeaux on your list one year, and the next it’s gone forever. That inconsistency makes it impossible to plan a serious program.

Q: So how does Rue Pinard solve that?

Hakan: Through scale and bonded logistics. Liv-ex gives us global supply and real-time pricing. Our bonded warehouses — in London, Bordeaux, Brussels, Hong Kong, and Miami — mean wines are held under perfect conditions, with taxes and duties suspended until the moment they’re needed.

Bart: That changes everything. Collectors can buy or sell without ever moving bottles through customs. Restaurants can reorder vintages with consistency, not just hope. And everyday enthusiasts suddenly see the same global inventory once reserved for insiders.

Q: You sound more like custodians than traders.

Bart: We are. Every bottle is treated as a masterpiece — controlled for light, temperature, humidity, handling, documentation. That’s preservation.

Hakan: And because we’re collectors ourselves, we know authenticity matters more than anything. Every bottle we handle has verified provenance. That’s why our clients trust us with portfolios worth millions.

Bart: But we’re not faceless. You deal directly with us, not a platform. Whether it’s one Macallan unicorn or a cellar of Burgundy, we’re present, personal, and accountable.

Q: You talk about liquidity for collectors. Isn’t wine about patience, not turnover?

Hakan: It’s both. A collection can be a passion project, but it doesn’t need to be dead capital. With Rue Pinard, bottles can be listed on Wine-Searcher, Cru Marketplace, or the Liv-ex exchange. That means collectors can sell, trade, or rebalance without losing provenance or storage integrity.

Bart: And if they want to drink instead? That’s the beauty. It’s freedom. You can drink, collect, or sell, whenever you choose. There are no lock-ins.

Q: Beyond the mechanics, what do you see as Rue Pinard’s role?

Bart: To connect passion with precision. The rarest bottle is meaningless if it isn’t genuine, preserved, and ready to be enjoyed. Our job is to take something fragile — a Madeira from 1811, a Cognac from 1788 — and make sure it lives on, intact, until the right moment.

Hakan: Luxury today isn’t just about ownership. It’s about trust, access, and knowing that your story — your collection — is part of a global narrative. That’s what we deliver.

As the conversation winds down, Bart opens a case stamped with the initials of a 19th-century Cognac house. He doesn’t pour — not tonight. Instead, he closes the lid with a smile.

“Luxury isn’t about having everything,” he says, “it’s about knowing you can, when the time is right.”