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In this video, I share some real-life advice for wine lovers and wine collectors who buy wine for
drinking, not for investing.
**LETโS CONNECT:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/blancdenoir/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/blancdenoir
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@nosediment
**CONTENTS OF THIS VIDEO:
0:00 Real-Life Advice for Wine Lovers Building a Cellar
0:48 Advice #1
1:51 Advice #2
2:53 Advice #3
4:01 Advice #4
5:51 Advice #5
7:29 Advice #6
#winecollection #wineeducation #wine
Disclaimer: As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

19 Comments
Donโt Coravin ever and save some troubles!
3:24 Damn, you have good taste in books as well as in wine. ๐
Happy Easter Day, Agnese! ๐ฐI have two friends who have large wine collections that I envy. But they are too large. They have invested in more wines than they can ever hope to drink, and we have had so many bottles opened so far past their prime that the wines were simply discarded. So yes, buy wines that you can and will drink yourselves and with friends. Wine is a terrible thing to waste. And I have one wine journalist who never disappoints. She posts a video on YouTube every Sunday from her studio in Latvia!๐ฅฐ
"Extra wine". Quel tragรฉdie… ๐
I wanted to start & maintain a fancy database system when I got serious about wine. Never happened. Sigh. Most I do now is photograph everything.
Given the amount of space I have my approach is quite limited. I do buy wines in the 2002-2015 range for immediate consumption. What I do buy to keep, at this point goes in my refrigerator. I have two under counter wine coolers but they are full so my frig is now filled with wine. I do have just enough room for some food cheese and farms booth cream for my coffee.
Great video. I only ever buy to drink now. I have very limited space so buy for now. Live for today ๐
Great video as always! Happy Easter!
I don't have the same problem as you as my knowledge is limited, I imagine your choice is overwhelming. I know I like Chablis, Rioja, Ribera Del Duero for example but I still try others… Another piece of advice is share. You can take something from others enjoyment of it and tasting notes.
Great video. Iโve a decent app that lets me know where a wine is the cellar, where itโs in itโs lifespan, itโs a bit conservative, but a great guide as it identifies whatโs โpast prime, drink now window or holdโ. Iโve rarely found one badly past a decent drinking state unless the cork has failed. One of the reasons I love screw caps, but thatโs a specific area where the app is way off many times. On the critic question, yes, there is one in Italy that always seems to be off.
Good advice. Buy what you enjoy, store it well and keep good records. In recent years I have bought from a single merchant, whose buyers I trust and which offers an excellent range and top value. I keep about a third (250 bottles) at home in a chiller cabinet and the rest in the merchant's cellars. For record keeping I use a simple Excel spreadsheet – not foolproof but it generally works for me.
As I have past my 70th birthday I shan't be buying any more fine wine, except for the occasional special bottle. Now, I just have to live for long enough to enjoy it all.
I built a collection of roughly 200 bottles over six to eight years and ultimately made a strong profit. It took a great deal of research, figuring out hyped winemaker X, Y and Z, which vineyards they're sourcing from, who's the vineyard manager, and with very limited production and tightly controlled mailing lists that quickly became inaccessible.
I chose to sell around 2023, while many of these highly allocated wines were still near their peak demand. Thereโs definitely a time and place for this kind of approach, but the market has become much more challenging. These days, secondary-market prices are softening, and auction hammer prices are often coming in below original winery release prices. Around a 200-300% "flip" on average but with some just about breaking even, but that's the way things work. Every hyped wine has it's time and place to sell, and once it's past that time, there will likely never be a profit to be made in that bottle again, so open and enjoy the wine.
I agree to a lot of the things you said. I started with storing wine in the kitchen – probably like everybody else – until the bottles got more expensive / me getting more and more enthusiastic about wine. Now I enjoy a magnificent wine fridge which I also use to limit the size of my collection. It gets crowded in the fridge? Stop buying! No! No second fridge for me. ๐ And since the fridge has a serving area, this is where the โneedledโ wines go. Easy to keep track.
I fully agree!
One of my closest friends had a daughter a little over 4 1/2 years ago. Little Lulu and I are best friends. From her perspective I do not "babysit" we have play dates. I have bought about a case and a half of assorted wines, thus far, from her birth year that according to various reviewers should still be drinkable for several years after she turns 21 and can drink in the US.
I am 60 years older than she and even if I am not around to share a bottle with her, she can sip some wine made from the air, sun, and soil the year she was born and think of her Uncle Bill. I can't think of a better reason to purchase wine that may outlast me.
Never influenced By wine critics or wine scores for example, many people relied on Robert Parker and what his scores were, but I didn't always agree with Robert Parker. But great video and varying informative and educational on people that buy wine
I never bought wine as an investment, but as an individual I still managed to sell wine over the years and decades. To other individuals, to brokers, and through online auction sites.
I've been lucky enough to buy some exceptional wines on release and still have a few of those bottles. Several were bought at high double digit or low to mid triple digit prices (in US dollars). I could not afford more than a few bottles of most of these. Certainly not a three digit prices.
At the time of release multiple reviewers had given them virtually perfect scores and their estimated "drink by" dates were decades out. Those bottles auction in the four figures now, and one or two in the high four figures. I have no intention of selling those, as I will never have an opportunity to drink wine at those prices again in my lifetime, and they still have years in their "drinking windows." However I did buy a few of those bottles when they were first released and not ridiculously expensive. Over the years I have sold a few of those and used the money to buy newer wine, allowing for a rolling inventory that lets me have a few newer bottles, also bought on release, that I could never afford to buy when they were ready to drink.
I'm not sure if I "made a lot of money" over the years, but I got to drink and share a lot of excellent/famous wines that I never could've afforded otherwise.
To date I have at least broken even on any wine I have bought and sold, and did all the researching and purchasing myself, but admittedly I have OCD and memorizing wines and vintages and reviews is fun for me. I've also subscribed to the Wine Spectator, The Wine Advocate, and Decanter for decades. Being old and buying wine when it was much cheaper certainly helped.
I can't tell a chardonnay from a chenin blanc, but I can recognize a Live After Death t-shirt without any problem at all – you rock!
I have several wines that, allegedly, have increased in value. Alas, they seem to evaporate.