MENTIONED IN THIS POST: –Abreu –Domaine de la Romanee Conti –Screaming Eagle About a decade ago, my teenage cousin got caught breaking into his father’s wine cellar. My cousin had decided to steal just one bottle, thinking my uncle wouldn’t notice. But he made a serious mistake when he carried out his heist: he took…
MENTIONED IN THIS POST: -Domaine de la Romanee Conti -Krug -Chateau Lafite-Rothschild Wine storage isn’t a one-size-fits-all process. A collector who owns a handful of aged wines will have different storage needs than a collector who owns 5,000 ultra-rare vintages. This storage guide for wine collectors will teach you how to analyze your collection to…
MENTIONED IN THIS POST: La Sirena Wines Krug Louis Roederer I recently got into an argument with one of my wine enthusiast friends over canned wine. After buying Underwood’s latest release (their Oregon Pinot Noir), he claimed that canned wine could be the future of the wine industry. I wholeheartedly disagreed. To start, you can’t…
FEATURED WINES: -Bollinger RD -Krug Collection -Dom Perignon P2 -Veuve Clicquot Rosé -Salon We do a lot of things with Champagne. We celebrate holidays and weddings with it, we kick off an elaborate meal with glass of racy Blanc de Blancs, and we shoot it out of Champagne guns off yachts in St. Barts (not…
I’ve known collectors who love the idea of professional storage, but they’re too afraid to do it because they fear that if anything goes wrong during shipping, they’ll lose every bottle they own. I get it–even though a professional warehouse may be the safest place for your wine, getting a large number of bottles there…
My grandmother always told me that I should never keep open Champagne overnight. When I got older, I decided to test this theory. Early one evening, I got more than halfway through a bottle of Moet & Chandon (don’t ask me why I opened it knowing I wouldn’t finish it) and since I didn’t want…
Whenever I see an amazing deal on wine, I’m tempted to invest in it, even if the wine itself doesn’t excite me very much. Last year, I spent about $350 on two cases of wine that wasn’t collectible because I thought I was getting them for a steal; almost 12 months later, a few of those bottles…
I’m reasonably skilled at opening wine bottles, but I’ve had quite a few synthetic corks break in half recently. One was a high-quality bottle of Oregon Pinot Noir whose synthetic cork was sealed so tightly to the neck of the bottle that it broke off into four separate chunks as I tried to pry it…
In 2014, a 6.0 magnitude earthquake struck Napa Valley in the early dawn hours, shattering thousands of bottles of wine. Winery owner Marguerite Capp told Reuters that she lost dozens of bottles in her tasting room just two weeks before their peak tourism season began. She was caught completely unprepared, saying, “Mother Nature moves on…
I once visited the home of a magnificent wine taster. The 70-year-old collector had developed an incredible palate for both Burgundy and aged scotch in his lifetime, and could tell you everything about Cote de Nuits. I assumed he would have a massive wine cellar in his home, but I found that he kept all…
When collectors ask me how often they should organize their wine cellars, they give me a strange look when I respond, “Ideally, never.” The best wine cellars are those that stay organized without much additional effort on your part, and as an organization expert, I’ve helped many clients accomplish this goal. I once met a…
So now that fall is over, many serious collectors are dealing with fall allocations: stacks of wine cases filled with dozens of new bottles. We’ve already talked about how to deal with those bottles, but what can you do with the packaging they were shipped in? While they’re beautiful to look at and difficult to throw…