When wine educator Mary Gorman-McAdams decided to clean out her wine supplies a few years ago, she was horrified by what she found lurking in her apartment: entire stacks of rose, Prosecco and cheap Merlot gathering dust behind her newer bottles. She says, “I had some initial hope for the Cotes du Rhone, but alas,…
Rhone wine expert John Livingstone-Learmonth isn’t easy to impress, yet when he talks about Jamet, he gushes, “A lot of people would give their right arm to possess even a fraction of this family’s vineyards.” For decades now, Jamet has produced the Rhone wines with greater complexity and depth of flavor than many other estates…
Quality auction houses take every precaution to stop wine fraud, but sometimes, their efforts aren’t enough. Last year, a popular auction house was accused of trying to sell counterfeit wine to customers, and was stopped when a sharp-eyed expert caught the attempted fraud. Years ago, the auction house had successfully sold an authentic bottle of…
Would you spend $40,000 on a single wine tour? What if the winery offered you the chance to craft your own blend, sending you home with customized, engraved bottles? Chateau Duval-Leroy is offering just such a package for its VIP customers, and it’s just one of dozens of ultra-lavish tours being offered this year. VIP…
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…
