Our story

A wine business built by people who actually drink it.

Cellars.com.au was founded in 2014 to do one thing well: take the retail markup out of Australian wine and put a real person on the other end of the phone. Twelve years on, we still do.

  • Independent
  • Australian-owned
  • Since 2014
  • 9,500+ wines
Cellars.com.au – Wine to be enjoyed.

2014Founded 
9,500+Wines on the list
7Cellar doors & DCs we ship from
100%Independent and Australian-owned

Chapter one · 2014

Founded by a vineyard director who’d seen one too many markups.

Cellars.com.au was started in 2014 by Marc Philips, a tech entrepreneur. After two decades on the grower side of the industry — watching good Australian wine pass through three or four sets of hands before it reached the people drinking it — Marc set out to do it differently. Cut the retail middlemen out, and sell direct from the people who make and move the wine.

He started small. The promise to customers was the same one he made to growers: an honest price, a real person on the phone, and wine you could actually trace back to a vineyard.

The buying bench · most wines tasted in person.

Chapter two · 2014–2024

Word travelled. The list grew. The promise didn’t change.

That promise is what built the business. Word travelled through restaurants, sommeliers, and customers who were quietly tired of paying retail markups on bottles they could see sitting in bond. By the late 2010s we’d outgrown the original Sydney shed. By the early 2020s we were one of the largest independent online cellars in the country, with more than 9,500 wines on the list and a buying team who personally knew most of the makers behind them.

Through all of it, Marc kept Cellars deliberately independent. No supermarket parent. No offshore retail group. Just a long list, a fair price, and a team you could actually ring.

Chapter three · 2025

A new chapter, the same standards.

In 2025, after eleven years at the helm, Marc sold the business and stepped back to spend more time on the vineyard side of the industry where he started. Aaron Hamilton stepped in as Managing Director.

Aaron came to Cellars.com.au with two decades in Australian retail and distribution, and a deep belief in the original idea: stay independent, stay close to the producers, and never lose the human voice on the phone. Nothing about how we buy, price, or pack changed when he took over — and that was the point.

“We didn’t buy this business to reinvent it. We bought it because what Marc built actually works — and most of the wine industry has forgotten how to do it.”

Aaron Hamilton · Managing Director · Adelaide

Aaron Hamilton, Managing Director.

Today

Run out of Adelaide. Shipped from across Australia.

We’re run out of Adelaide by a tight-knit team — buyers, customer care, fulfilment, and a few people who do a bit of everything. It’s  deliberately small.

Adelaide HQ

Buying, customer care, and the people behind every order. Pick up the phone Mon–Fri, 8am–5pm AEST and an actual member of the team answers.

Cellar doors across the country

Partnerships with cellar doors in the Barossa, McLaren Vale, the Yarra Valley, the Hunter, and Margaret River — so your bottles travel the shortest distance from maker to door.

Distribution centres in every state

Bonded distribution facilities in NSW, VIC, QLD and WA mean faster delivery, fewer kilometres on a truck, and a smaller carbon footprint per case.

What hasn’t changed since 2014

Five things we won’t be moving on.

  • Independent and Australian-owned

    No supermarket parent, no offshore retail group. Cellars.com.au is owned and operated by Cellars.com.au Pty Ltd, ABN 14 684 443 392.

  • Direct from distributors

    No retail middlemen marking up bottles on their way to you.

  • Hand-picked, not algorithm-picked

    Our buying team chooses every wine on the list. If it isn’t good enough to drink ourselves, it isn’t good enough to be on the site.

  • Real people on the phone

    Monday to Friday, 8am–5pm AEST. The number at the top of this page rings a desk in Adelaide.

  • Properly licensed

    SA Liquor Licence No. 57712682 and NT Liquor Licence No. IRL0261. We ship to every state and territory in compliance with local liquor law.

Twelve years in, the address has changed and the team has grown—but the reason Marc started Cellars.com.au is still the reason people keep ordering from us.

Good wine, fair prices, and someone you can actually talk to.

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