A drink with...Tom Gearing on CultX and AI in the wine market

My dad introduced me to wine when I was growing up. The first time I went to Burgundy, I was about 10 and there's a famous family photo of me and my dad sitting on the wall of [Domaine de la] Romanée-Conti.

We had some great trips. We first started going in the family car, and the last year I remember going with him we took a full transit van! My dad set up a company selling to other collectors and then left [his job in] the City and set up a company called Financial Wines. He came from a financial background [and] really believed using the internet to create efficiency and transparency for consumers.

CultX does feel like a continuation of some things he was trying to tackle.

We [recently] launched all of our transactional data on the platform. We’re trying to make it simple and easy for people to get all the relevant information they need to be able to make a decision on whether they want to buy or sell something.

The thing that's exciting me now is how we can leverage AI to interrogate that data. For me, AI as a tool is about combining a user experience with large data sets to make it faster and easier for people to ask questions and get answers.

[For example], if you said, “I’m looking for a wine to cellar, potentially for drinking or for investment, I want a younger vintage not in its drinking window, I've got a budget of £50 per bottle and I want a Bordeaux blend”; you want the AI to say, “these are the top three or four wines within your budget, style you’re looking for, and purpose”.

A lot of people talk about the new generation of collectors and investors and what they want. Millennials and Gen Z are much more familiar with digital products.

We thought around that and listened to people who [say], “I’d like to get into collecting wine, I don’t know where to start, and I might have a small amount to invest”. We built an onboarding wizard [One-Minute Cellar] for the CultX platform, which uses AI.

[Questions include] your budget, what sort of risk you want to take and how easily you need the wines to sell. We turn our transactional data into a liquidity score, so if someone wants a low-risk portfolio with wines that are easy to sell, the AI is going to filter out anything that doesn’t meet certain criterias.

At CultX, we’ve got 6,000 live markets, so imagine a beginner who likes wine but doesn't really know where to start. People don’t have to choose the recommended wines, it’s just to make that whole journey a little bit easier.

Wine has to be physical in the warehouse. If you buy anything on CultX it [can be] immediately delivered to you. You’re buying from other users; that’s exciting because buyers and sellers are connecting with each other.

The market downturn in the last couple of years has been a real challenge. A lot of wine companies have struggled in terms of lack of liquidity; buyers and sellers in the market.

If you're a client that invested in [the up-market of] 2021–2022, you've lost money and it's taken a long time to exit, I have absolute sympathy for you.

One of the things I’ve learned is that our investment strategy pre-2022 was too diversified. Now, I think we are much better prepared because of the data we've got and models we've built.

Total trades on CultX in 2025 rose 7.2% versus 2024, with average prices down 5.6%. There has been a bit of a sea change [on the market] since September. We’re seeing good price stabilisation in some areas.

The top part of the market – the most liquid wines – has benefited so far. They’ve had a bit of a tick-up. If you look a bit broader to the level below that, and then the much wider level below that, I still see a lot of pressure on the offer side of the market. I feel that 2026 will be a recovery year.