In the 1930s and 1940s, French winemaking families could easily pay off even the steepest wine inheritance tax within one harvest season. Today, paying off inheritance taxes on vineyards can take 10 years or more on family-run estates. Domaine Armand Rousseau’s Eric Rousseau explains, “It’s even more crippling for domaines that have difficulty selling their…
MENTIONED IN THIS POST: Bordeaux Burgundy Tuscany Nephrologist Ken Bleifer started collecting wine 50 years ago, simply because he loved the taste. By the time his collection reached 4,000 bottles, he realized he had more wine than he could possibly drink, and decided to sell a few of them off. He soon discovered that he…
Summer is just about here, and you’ve probably noticed a change in the way the strength of the sunlight. As the sun breaks through the clouds and the temperature rises, natural sunlight inches its way into the corners of your home that are normally dark and dreary all winter. This is great news for your…
Wine experts Dorothy Gaiter and John Brecher never planned on becoming serious collectors — it suddenly happened one day when they realized they owned more bottles than they could possibly drink. However, it isn’t always this easy to start a wine collection. As much as 90 percent of the wine sold in the US is…
Off the top of your head, how many wine retailers can you name that sell wines and offer you expert advice by phone based on your personal cellar needs? When wine collector Martha Welch bought more than 2,000 bottles of wine over the past four years, she had the benefit of a truly full-service retailer…
Writer John Lenart once visited a wine shop, and overheard a customer telling the shop owner that he would never buy a wine that scored below 90. Lenart says, “Aside from making that person sound like a complete wine snob, it’s also a ridiculous thing to say. I wanted to ask if this person could…
Forbes’ Tyler Colman set out to find the best wine app that could identify wine bottles in his cellar using only his phone’s camera. After trying a few cellar management apps, he landed on one that looked promising — until he put it to the test. The app claimed it could scan any wine bottle’s…
An estimated 36 billion bottles of wine are produced around the world every year. With this much wine on the market, how do you choose just one wine worth collecting? Writer Heather Irwin says that you shouldn’t expect to collect the most prized bottles of wine in the world right away. Most collectors, even serious…
A few years ago, a Chowhound forum member shared a particular, but not uncommon, wine etiquette conundrum. She had invited a couple of friends over for dinner, but the wine they brought as a gift — a Mateus Rosé — was far too sweet for the steak dinner planned. Nonetheless, she thanked them for the…
You’ve heard of wine and food pairings, but have you ever heard of The Great Led Zeppelin Wine Pairing? A vintner, a musician, and a wine expert wanted to see what would happen if they tried to pair wines with the music of Led Zeppelin. What followed were six complete courses of wine, food, and…
If you’ve ever traveled to another state or another country, you’ll find that the wine prices vary dramatically. Living in a state like Oregon, you’ll be used to paying zero sales tax on wines, but when you take a trip down to California for the weekend, you might find that those same wine bottles cost…
The first time I moved my wine collection, I thought it would be a simple process. After all, I was only moving my collection from my apartment to my new home 20 minutes away in another state. What I didn’t realize until a week before my scheduled move was that, because I was moving to…
