Wine Auction Buyers Premium: What Every House Charges
Updated
The buyer's premium is the only auction fee large enough to reverse your decision. At Christie's it turns a £1,000 hammer into £1,300 before a single bottle moves, and that gap is where most auction-versus-merchant comparisons quietly go wrong.
What is a wine auction buyers premium?
It is a percentage of the hammer price that the auction house charges you on top of your winning bid. On wine it runs from 17% to 25% across the seven houses below, and in the UK, as Christie's and Bonhams both spell out in their own terms, VAT is charged on the premium too.
Every house here charges a flat wine rate, not a tiered one, applied to the whole hammer, so your rate never steps down as the lot gets larger. Sotheby's states in its help centre that it charges 24% on all hammer prices for wines and spirits globally, plus a 1% overhead premium. Christie's specifies 25% on wine in its London and New York conditions of sale. Bonhams lists 24% on wine and whisky in the UK on its buyer's premium page. Zachys states 25% in its conditions of sale, and Acker published 25% in the last capture we could retrieve. iDealwine charges 21.5% before French VAT, which it publishes as 25.8% including tax. WineBid's FAQ states 17%. In the UK, VAT at 20% then goes on the premium, so Christie's 25% costs a private buyer £30 for every £100 of hammer.
What does each auction house charge on wine?
Between 17% and 25% of the hammer, depending on the house, plus a further 1% at Sotheby's. Rates below are the published wine rates, retrieved 7 August 2026 from the sources listed at the foot of this page. Everything is before local taxes unless the row says otherwise.
| House | Published wine premium | Tiered? | Other buyer-side charges in the same terms |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sotheby's | 24% of hammer, worldwide wines and spirits | No | 1% overhead premium on all hammer prices |
| Christie's (London) | 25% of hammer, wine, spirits and cigars | No | VAT added to the premium, shown separately |
| Christie's (New York) | 25% of final bid price, wine | No | NY sales tax at 8.875% collected on release to a third-party shipper |
| Bonhams (UK) | 24% of hammer, wine and whisky | No | VAT at 20% added to the premium |
| Zachys | 25% of hammer | No | Protection Fee of 1% of hammer plus premium on arranged deliveries, applied unless you decline it |
| Acker | 25%, as last published in 2024 | No | Confirm in the catalogue |
| iDealwine | 21.5% excl. VAT, 25.8% incl. VAT, from 27 March 2026 | No | Storage at €0.15 per bottle per day from the 31st day |
| WineBid | 17% of hammer | No | Sales tax on hammer plus premium; a minimum of two months' free storage |
One caveat on Acker. Acker's own FAQ publishes 25%, but the most recent version we can point to dates from 2024 rather than this year. Every other rate on this table is current. Check Acker's own catalogue terms before you bid.
Why is the wine rate different from the headline rate you have seen?
Because wine is carved out of the tiered schedule, and all three London houses print the wine rate as a separate exception. The ladders you have read about belong to the art and objects sales. Sotheby's help centre puts its London ladder at 28% on hammer up to and including £1,500,000, 22% between £1,500,000 and £6,000,000, and 15% above £6,000,000. The same page then lists "Global Wines & Spirits" as a separate line: 24% on all hammer prices, plus 1%. Christie's London wine conditions of sale set out a general rate of 26% up to £700,000, 20% on the part above £700,000 up to £4,500,000 and 14.5% above that, then add one sentence: "Exception: the buyer's premium for Wine, Spirits and Cigars is 25% of the hammer price." Bonhams is blunter still. Its UK schedule of 28%, 27%, 21% and 14.5% is headed "For all Sales categories excluding Wine, Coins & Medals and Motor Cars and Motorcycles", and wine sits underneath on its own line at 24%.
The practical consequence: bid £250,000 on a case of Romanée-Conti and the rate is the same as on a £900 case of claret. In a non-wine Bonhams sale that £250,000 would already have stepped from 28% on the first £40,000 down to 27% on the rest. On wine, one rate covers the whole lot. Size buys you nothing here.
Does VAT get added to the buyer's premium?
In the UK, yes, and it is not optional. Christie's London conditions state that "whether you choose to buy the lot in bond or duty paid, VAT will be added to the buyer's premium and will be shown separately on our invoice." Bonhams says the same in one line: VAT at the current rate of 20% is added to the buyer's premium. The UK standard rate is 20% (GOV.UK).
So the number that matters to a UK private buyer is the premium grossed up:
- Christie's London: 25% plus 20% VAT on the premium = £30.00 per £100 of hammer
- Bonhams UK: 24% plus 20% VAT on the premium = £28.80 per £100 of hammer
- iDealwine: 21.5% plus 20% French VAT = €25.80 per €100 of hammer, which is the 25.8% it publishes
That last line is the trap. iDealwine quotes tax-inclusive, the London houses quote tax-exclusive, and a buyer who lines up "25%" against "25.8%" concludes that Christie's is cheaper when it is about four points dearer. Look for the words "excl. VAT" before you compare anything.
Two exceptions worth knowing. Christie's notes that VAT on the buyer's premium may be reclaimed by UK VAT-registered clients via their own VAT return subject to the normal rules, which changes the maths for trade buyers. And in New York, according to Christie's New York Conditions of Sale for Wine & Spirits, the house collects NY sales tax at 8.875% when property is released to a third-party shipper, regardless of the destination of the lot, unless there is a tax exemption on file.
What does a £1,000 hammer actually cost?
£1,300, in a Christie's London wine sale, bought in bond by a private UK buyer. Take a twelve-bottle case knocked down at £1,000. In bond, Christie's charges no excise duty and no clearance VAT on the hammer, so the premium and the VAT on it are the whole story:
| Line | Amount |
|---|---|
| Hammer | £1,000 |
| Buyer's premium at 25% | £250 |
| VAT on the premium at 20% | £50 |
| Payable to the auction house | £1,300 |
Take the same case duty paid and two more lines appear: excise duty, charged on litres of pure alcohol rather than on value at £30.62 per litre for wine between 8.5% and 22% ABV from 1 February 2026 (GOV.UK), and clearance VAT on the duty-inclusive hammer. The full landed-cost breakdown walks every line of that stack, and the landed-cost calculator runs your own numbers with the source shown against each line.
When does the premium make a merchant cheaper?
Whenever the merchant's price is below your hammer grossed up. Because the premium is flat, the break-even is a single division: take the merchant's in-bond offer and divide by 1.30 for Christie's London, or 1.288 for Bonhams UK. That is your maximum hammer. Bid above it and the merchant wins, on a bottle whose condition you can ask about and a seller you can go back to.
A merchant offering a case in bond at £1,300 is beaten only by a hammer of £1,000 or less. Skip that division and you can pay more at auction than the wine was listed for at retail. The risk is largest on wines with deep merchant distribution and smallest on the scarce ones like Pétrus, where there is no merchant shelf to compare against.
Which house is actually cheapest?
On the published rate, WineBid at 17% is the lowest of the seven, and Christie's, Zachys and Acker at 25% are the highest. On what you pay, the ranking moves, because the premium arrives bundled with storage, shipping, sales tax and the depth of the venue's bidder pool.
A low premium at a thin venue can still clear higher than a high premium at a deep one: the premium is published before the sale, so bidders price it into what they bid. The only way to settle it is to compare what the same wine, in the same vintage and format, actually realised at each venue.
How do you use this before your next bid?
Multiply the hammer by 1.30 before you decide anything, and check whether the rate you were quoted includes tax. Those two habits catch almost every overpayment on this page.
Rates move. iDealwine went from 21% to 21.5% excluding VAT on 27 March 2026, a date printed in its own terms. The Christie's documents quoted here are the London wine conditions of sale dated 23 April 2026 and the New York Wine & Spirits set dated 30 April 2026. We re-check this table every 90 days and log what changed.
Knowing the premium tells you what to add. It does not tell you what to bid. That comes from hammer-price history: what this wine, this vintage, this format has actually realised, sale after sale, with the premium already applied so the number is the number.
Our weekly note sends the auction hammer-price history behind the market index straight to your inbox, including the lots that cleared under merchant price and the ones that cleared over. Free, one email a week, and you can stop it in one click.