Buyer beware - PMH Wines

We generally encourage winelovers to support small independent merchants. Many of them are adventurous in stocking interesting, unusual and small-production wines which the supermarkets and larger merchant chains avoid, preferring bland branded wines suited to the mass (and often undiscriminating) market.
However, business for small merchants can be precarious financially, and from time to time some disappear. Overheads can be high and factors such as excise duty, exchange rates, transport and warehousing costs take a big chunk out of any profits.
It is always sad to see a merchant go out of business. However, there have been some recent horror stories of merchants who have disappeared with client’s money for en-primeur purchases - where you pay upfront for wine which is still in the cellars (usually in Bordeaux) which is then delivered at a later date, when the duty and transport costs need to be paid. Admittedly this applies primarily to the top Bordeaux chateaux, but for many of us this is the only way to get hold of potentially great claret without going broke ourselves.
Decanter (5 October 2007) reports that PMH Wines in Godalming seems to have let customers down by failing to pay French suppliers for wine ordered on behalf of a client. Although PMH went into liquidation in 2006, Decanter reports that the director of the company is now trading as The Wine Barrel based in Sandhurst and Aldershot (Hants). Buying “en primeur” is always risky, because you are assuming that the vintage you have purchased will be both drinkable and valuable in years to come - but you obviously have to be additionally careful who you buy from!