MVA.wine is an exploration-led wine membership. We curate rare, artisanal wines for a limited number of members. We're explorers at heart, and we taste hundreds of bottles to make sure the ones that make it to you are exceptional discoveries in every way.

MVA.wine was founded by Laurent Vernhes, grandson of a winemaker from the Southwest of France. In 2000, Laurent co-founded Tablet Hotels — an expert-curated selection of the world's most extraordinary independent hotels, acquired by Michelin in 2018. MVA.wine is the same idea, applied to wine: find the hidden gems before everyone else does, and share them with people who care.

Two words: independence and discovery. We import our wines directly from the estates we select, which means we are not limited to what a distributor or importer has to offer. It gives us the freedom to curate wines you wouldn't necessarily have picked yourself or cannot find anywhere else. And we find that exciting.

No. In fact, nobody knows as much about wine as they think they do: there's simply too much to learn, and any good sommelier will tell you that the more they learn, the less they know. Just try things out, build your palate, and trust your taste. You'll already be in the 1%.

We only curate artisanal, rare wines. In very broad terms, that means wines that honestly represent their terroirs and that are produced in small quantities (our biggest winery produces up to 200,000 bottles total per year, a number some others exceed with only one cuvée). Additionally, they need to taste absolutely delicious of course. We blind-taste every wine we consider, because "artisanal" is not a perfect synonym for "quality." But "industrial" sure is a synonym for "no thanks" — so artisanal is where we start.

The wines we select are produced in very small quantities, sometimes as small as 300 bottles. Usually, there aren’t more than a few thousand bottles available. To give you an idea of what that means: some estates produce millions of bottles of the same wine per year, and champagne estates that produce "only" 100,000 bottles per year are considered small. By that standard, our wines are not rare. They're sporadic.

"Natural wine" is a very broad label that encompasses a wide range of meanings. What we seek are wines made the hard way, in the vineyard. That means minimal intervention, spontaneous fermentation, no additives, no crude oak chips, no chemical shortcuts to correct something that isn't already excellent.

If you think of natural wines as wines that smell like manure or cow dung, rest assured: we don't curate those.

Most of our wines are biodynamic or organic. Winemakers don't always choose to have their bottles certified organic, but still work in ways that respect their terroir and vines.

That's an easy one. No. You don't need our help to discover prestigious wines. One of our greatest joys is to highlight the work of winemakers who don't have the marketing muscle to get the recognition they deserve. What all prestigious wines have in common is that they are expensive. We take pride in selecting wines that overdeliver. And when the world catches up, we are happy for them when their prices go up.

In theory, from anywhere in the world. In reality, we don't yet have the gift of ubiquity and we need time to canvass the vastness of wine terroirs across the globe. Our current catalogue spans Europe and South America, with upcoming collections from the US and South Africa. Stay tuned!

Our curation process is based on blind tasting. Every three months, the MVA.wine team and our panel of winemakers gather at Maison Vernhes, a farmhouse in Tuscany. We pour 50 pre-selected wines and blind-taste them over a few days. Every member of the panel gives each wine a "yes," "no," or "maybe." Only 6 wines that receive unanimous approval make the cut and become a collection. Yes, that means we reject around 90% of what we taste: that's how obsessed with quality we are.

We believe wine is better enjoyed as a discovery than an endless repetition of the same, and that the element of surprise plays a role in how our tastebuds appreciate it. That's why we don't disclose all our wines in advance: members receive detailed information about each wine in a collection when it ships. In the meantime, you can check our wine highlights to get a sense of what to look forward to.

To be completely honest, our wines are not famous and rarely imported in the US yet — so even if we gave members full access to the wine list in advance, it would probably be of no help in evaluating if they're going to like them. Our curation process is proof of this: we know everything there is to know on paper about the wines that participate in our blind tastings, and we still reject 90% of them. We understand it can feel uncomfortable not knowing exactly what you're signing up for. But the only judgment that matters is what you think of what’s in your glass.

We are building an international community of exceptional producers, one collection at a time. Apart from our team, our tasting panel includes winemakers whose work we admire and winemakers whose wines have been selected in prior collections. There's no fooling them on quality and how the wines were made, but their comments and insights go way beyond the technical. Having them around the table truly is a treat.

Maison Vernhes is a farmhouse on a hilltop in Val d'Orcia, Tuscany (UNESCO World Heritage landscape, if that means anything to you). It's where wine samples arrive year-round from our global network of enthusiasts, and where, every three months, we disappear for a week of blind tastings to decide which wines deserve to be in a collection.

Please do! Members can suggest wines they think deserve a place in our collections via the "Suggest a Wine" section in their account. Some of our best discoveries were made this way.

Every two months, members receive what we call a Collection: a case of 6 wines that we think belong together. These wines are available to members only and cannot be purchased by visitors on our website. As a member, you can pause your shipments at any time, receive a collection twice if you wish, or reorder individual bottles of the wines you loved most.

Each collection is $250, shipping included, plus tax depending on where you live in the US. Members are charged on a per-collection basis, only when a case ships.

Please note that we only deliver in the US for the moment.

No. Each collection is $250, shipping included, and is only charged when it ships.

Yes. When you become a member, you're with us for a year. You can set yourself to auto renew or renew your membership manually at the end of each year. If your membership lapses and you wish to rejoin, you'll need to register on the waitlist again.

The wines we curate are available in very limited quantities, so our membership is also limited. We are monitoring availability at winery level and managing our inventory very carefully. It becomes more complicated as our membership grows.

It’s long been established that good wines can only be produced in small quantities. We capped our membership because the wines we are seeking are available in quantities that cannot be scaled.

Yes! Members and non-members can gift Collection No. 5, Golden Hour, via the "Gift" section on our home page. This collection features wines for which we were able to obtain a larger allocation. But it’s not that much larger, so don’t wait!

Members can reorder any wine featured in a collection they've received, provided we still have it in stock. Our wines never repeat, and when we're out, we're out — so it's worth acting sooner rather than later.

Reach out to our customer service at service@mva.wine and we'll take care of it.

You can reach us by replying to any email we've sent you, or by writing to service@mva.wine. If a bottle ever misses the mark, please let us know so we can send you another one.