Having gone through a devastating spring frost and continued problems with premox, Burgundy needed some good news for a change, and it looks like it got it. Like a phoenix rising from the ashes, Burgundy’s low grape yields might actually produce one of the most legendary wines of this decade, which is excellent news for…
Collectors often assume that a wine’s provenance doesn’t matter once they’ve bought their bottles and stowed them away in their cellars. This might be true if they only plan on drinking the wine, but if they want to resell the bottle later, the wine’s provenance still has a long way to go. I’ve bought bottles…
Wine collector Billy Grippo opened his first premox bottle about eight years ago, when he was out to dinner with friends. He brought along a fantastic Leflaive 2002 Chevalier-Montrachet that he thought would be incredible in its old age, but when he poured the first glass, it looked nothing like the rich, straw-colored liquid he…
Wine Berserkers forum member Jay Hack said he wanted the perfect wedding gift for his nephew, so he did what any self-respecting wine lover would: he invested in a wine fridge and started filling it with the best vintages he could find. He wanted to include at least one excellent bottle from his nephew’s wedding…
When you’ve been a wine collector for decades, “wine of the century” is a phrase you’ve likely heard dozens of times, yet you’d be lucky if even one recent vintage lived up to the hype. However, I’m not exaggerating when I say that 2015 German wine might make a fan out of the most jaded…
The wine world was shocked when a sudden frost hit France this spring, and so far, it looks like one of the country’s greatest casualties is the Loire Valley. The average producer in this iconic wine region has already lost up to 30 percent of the crop, and in the most frostbitten areas, the crop…
Ex-chateau Bordeaux is in the midst of a historical identity crisis. For centuries now, Bordeaux has been lauded as one of the finest wine regions in the world, but fraud and a market bubble have forced its winemakers to make a drastic move: forgoing en primeur sales in favor of ex-chateau. More estates than ever…
When wine lover Dave McIntyre was invited to try a bottle of Screaming Eagle Cabernet with a close friend, he couldn’t believe his ears. The 2011 Screaming Eagle Cab costs more than $3,000 and was still in its infancy, yet McIntyre’s friend insisted on drinking it for a special dinner anyway. Curious whether the Screaming…
In the film Sideways, a character muses, “You know, the day you open a ‘61 Cheval Blanc…that’s the special occasion.” The main character in the film is obsessed with 1961 Cheval Blanc, and for good reason; in its best vintages, it’s one of the finest wines in the world. But the 2005 Cheval Blanc received…
Over the past decade, Bordeaux has seen some of the most extreme ups and downs in the history of wine. Coming off a high note in 2000, when wines received excellent scores and were the most expensive in Bordeaux’s history, critics had high hopes for Bordeaux in the new millennium. However, their hopes were dashed…
Wine investor Tom Gearing has seen his fair share of nervous wine collectors trying to get into investment-grade French wine for the first time. Collectors often feel as though they need to spend thousands of dollars on the top wine estates in France in order to get decent profits from their investments, but this isn’t…
How much would you pay for a bottle of 1995 Latour? If I told you that the bottle hadn’t left the Latour estate since it was bottled nearly two decades ago, would you be willing to pay more for it than a bottle that’s passed through dozens of hands in its lifetime? In 2013, collectors…