Wine News & Collecting Tips

STEP 3: CHECK THEIR PRICESAs you are checking the price trends of the wines your potential wine brokers recommend, you should also be checking the actual prices they are quoting you....

STEP 2: TEST THEM TO ASSESS THEIR SKILLSMost wine brokers you come across will pass Step 1, having experience. If they don’t, remove them from consideration immediately.  But once you’ve...

We have been in the wine business all our adult lives, and we know, at least by reputation, all of the major wine brokers in the country. When friends come...

In the world of wine, there is an important distinction between subjective assessments (i.e. simply liking a wine for personal reasons) and objective determinations of a wine's level of quality.  Professional tasters...

The ability to accurately describe the flavors of a wine and distinguish between different grape varietals is not an innate gift granted to so-called “supertasters” at birth; instead, it is...

You can drink wine out of virtually any vessel - an old goblet, a coffee mug, or even the bottle itself - but in order to have the best tasting...

In today’s marketplace, wine bottles come in a wide variety of sizes for different occasions, but it’s not always apparent how and why these different vessels got their names. This...

Wine labels contain quite a bit of information, some of which is crucial to understanding what’s inside the bottle, and some of which is simply there to draw the eye...

Wine is different from so many other investable assets because it’s more like a work of art than a commodity. Serge Hochar, a legendary winemaker who tragically passed away in...

The 1990s were an exciting decade for wine — particularly in the United States. During that decade, the industry saw a massive turnover of ownership from the post-War, post-Prohibition pioneers...

You’re ultimately responsible for storing your investment safely. Without proper cellaring, your wine can become worthless in short order. Storing rare wine requires long-term thinking that takes into account all...

In the fine wine marketplace, fraud is not limited to scurrilous collectors and resellers - as we will see below, winemakers themselves can perpetrate fraud on a grand scale:In 2008,...

Sadly enough, all rare wine collectors today are at risk for fraud. It’s the role of a skilled broker to investigate the provenance and authenticity of any bottles you’re considering...

Sweet Wine BasicsHow It’s MadeWhen a winemaker decides to produce a sweet wine, he or she faces a dilemma: sugar is required to make the wine taste sweet, but the...

Rose Wine BasicsHow It’s MadeThere are three basic methods of rose wine production: limited skin maceration, saignee or “bleeding,” and blending. As we mentioned in our guide on Red Wine...