There’s a common saying among barbecue experts, “If you’re looking, you’re not cooking.” The idea is that the more you peek under the barbecue lid, the longer it takes for your food to cook. Yet this cliche applies to your wine collection too; the more you fidget with your bottles, the less opportunity they have…
My first-ever online wine order was a disaster. One summer evening, while I was looking through my 28-bottle wine cooler, I saw that I was nearly out of drinkable red wines. On a whim, I decided to order a mixed case from a small online retailer, which included ready-to-drink bottles of Grenache, Cabernet Sauvignon, and…
Wine critic Richard Jennings never understood the hype around California cult Cabernet. He admits that these wines are usually ultra-concentrated and flavorful, but, he says, “I also believe the great majority of wines in this category are hardly deserving of the stratospheric prices and disproportionate attention they have received over the years.” However, that was…
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…
When you think of French wine, you probably picture bubbly Champagne, savory Rhone, or rare Bordeaux and Burgundy blends. However, writer Sophia Schweitzer points out that France has so much more going on for it, all hidden in the countrysides of lesser-known regions. In the past, collectors only considered French AOC wines to be worth…
A group of wine collectors were talking about the best wine deal they missed out on, and why they wished they would have made a better choice. One of the collectors recalled a now-legendary release of Aldo Conterno Barolo in 2012, shortly after Conterno’s death. Some of the top wine retailers in the world offered…
Portland-based collector Dave Smith used to be the proud owner of an almost mythical Melchizedek Champagne bottle, which held a whopping 30 liters of wine. Only 20 of these large-format bottles are made every year, so you can imagine Smith’s shock and disappointment when, one day, his Melchizedek exploded. No one knows for sure why…
You never want to be stuck with a wine bottle you can’t open, especially when you’re in the middle of the woods. I know a wine enthusiast who once took a spontaneous weekend trip with friends to a campsite hours away from his home. He brought along a couple bottles of Merlot, thinking he’d relax…
You’re invited to a wine tasting, and the host sets two glasses of wine in front of you. After tasting them, you find that both are of equal quality, and you can’t decide which you prefer. That’s when your host reveals the wines’ origins: one is from the reputable Napa Valley and costs $120, while…
Earlier this year, thousands of customers sued California wine retailer Premier Cru for allegedly running a Ponzi scheme. According to these collectors, Premier Cru sold them more than $60 million in French wine futures, but failed to deliver the bottles as promised. Lawyer Thomas Boothe says he lost $161,000 in investments on French wine futures,…
A Wine Spectator reader named Joe M. wrote in to wine expert Dr. Vinifera with a conundrum: he had a bottle of 1889 Rare Malmsey, but he wasn’t sure whether he should drink it, or keep it as a trophy bottle. Since the reader had no plans on selling the bottle, Dr. Vinny told him,…
What if you bought tens of thousands of dollars worth of wine at an auction, only to discover that a significant number of the bottles were fake? This is exactly what happened to one wine collector who bought dozens of bottles of decades-old Burgundy. The collector was curious whether all of the wines in the…
