In 1988, billionaire Bill Koch bought the wine of a lifetime: four pristine 1784 Lafite bottles owned by Thomas Jefferson himself. Koch paid wine collector Hardy Rodenstock nearly $500,000 for the privilege of owning a piece of wine history. In 2005, Koch submitted his bottles to the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, but soon discovered…
With wine fraud, it’s difficult to know how widespread the problem is until major collectors like Bill Koch become its victims. The wine industry brings in about $300 billion per year in revenue, but experts believe that hundreds of thousands of dollars in profits are made exclusively on fake or mislabeled wine. A recent study…
The age of the truly free New York sommelier might be over. The New York State Liquor Authority recently announced that it will change the state’s beverage laws, making it impossible for restaurants to craft wine lists based around wines from private collections. In other words, New York restaurants will only be able to…
Thomas Jefferson once wrote, “I think it is a great error to consider a heavy tax on wines as a tax on luxury. On the contrary, it is a tax on the health of our citizens.” At the time this quote was written, Jefferson was in an intense fight against British taxation in the United…
Some wine experts lament the alleged death of quality online wine journalism. Yet critics like Jancis Robinson embrace this modern change, saying that social media is transforming the way we think about wine for the better. In a recent interview, Robinson said, “There was a time when someone like me could hand down opinions from…
Some collectors can store their wine in a cool, dark home cellar, but most collectors are better off investing in a professional cellar service to avoid bottle spoilage. Most wine experts agree that storing a wine between 52 and 55 degrees is the only safe temperature range, depending on the varietal. Yet what many experts…
When today’s sommeliers taste wines, they can often immediately pick out the unique flavors and bouquets associated with bottles from Champagne and Bordeaux. That’s partly because, in the late 1800s, French land became cheap and plentiful, allowing winemakers to purchase entire regions of their own, and to grow the grapes to the same high standards.…
Today, California Grenache is among the most sought-after varietals in the region, but this was not always the case. California winegrowers turned away from this traditional Rhone crop in the mid-1900s, believing that Grenache would never attract premium collectors who wanted the rarest wines. As Napa Valley developed its premium reputation, commercialized Grenache lost favor;…
Winemaker Kirk Grace has said that a vine’s age often has less to do with the resulting wine’s flavor than the cultivation of the vine itself.1 He believes that winemakers who allow their vines to grow thick canopies of leaves will be disappointed by the results, and that vines with too few leaves have a…
The London International Vintners Exchange (Liv-ex) can teach collectors a great deal about the 1855 Classification, including what these old classifications mean in the modern wine market. As Liv-ex released its latest update in September, we find patterns in the organization’s findings that tell us more about the market value of top Bordeaux blends, and…
I think of terroir as the DNA of wine. If I can recognize a wine’s origin by its particular taste and aroma, then I am confident that we are talking not only about a specific region, but also about a terroir in its own right. We recognize cool or warm climates through a wine’s low…
While many serious wine collectors focus on vintages from years when the growing conditions were ideal, for collectors who look at wine as an investment, this may not be the best approach. Off-vintages cost less up front than premium vintages, and also appreciate at a rapid rate. For example, 2008 Bordeaux vintages cost, on average,…