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…
Wine collector Penelope Wise says she first started buying Bordeaux and Burgundy out of bond because she loved seeing the wine stacked inside her home cellar. When she started traveling more, she wasn’t around to keep an eye on her home cellar as often, so she started buying wine under bond through a London merchant,…
Did you know that only 10 countries are responsible for making 80 percent of the world’s wine supply? That’s because grapes are a fickle fruit; to grow them, you need a climate with relatively little rain, the ideal amount of sunlight, and the perfect balance of fast-draining compounds in the soil. Knowing how difficult it…
Painting your wine cellar is deceptively easy, and can quickly turn into a nightmare. I once knew a wine fanatic who wanted to transform the extra basement space in her house into a wine bar. She started off strong, replacing the carpet with tile, buying a humidifier, and installing wine racks on the walls. At…
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…
