When is a Wine Worth Too Much to Drink?

I’ve been buying and drinking wine for over 30 years now, and while everything I’ve purchased over the years has been acquired with the intention of drinking it at some point, I find I have a few bottles that are worth far more now than I ever imagined. I’ve always thought that the value of a particular wine is what I paid for it, and have never felt bad about drinking them (or sharing them with others) if they’ve appreciated in a normal way.

But what about those wines that appreciated due to rarity and are now commanding $500-1000 per bottle? I’ve always been very middle class, so while I’ve spent a good sum on wine over the years, it’s been more about building a fun, interesting cellar, but with affordable (mostly $20-$75 bottle cost) wines that I enjoy. I just happened to pick up a few things along the way that have gone insane recently ('99 Verset Cornas, as an example), and I’m thinking about selling a few of these gems.

I know I will really love the wines when I open them…but is the enjoyment of a case of wine worth the current price? I could sell a mixed case of various items that originally cost under $500 and pay for a trip to Italy for my wife and I. But I also know that I will never be able to drink or afford these wines again unless I open the ones I own. Obviously this is a very personal issue, I just wonder how others deal with it and if there is a point in people’s minds where they think “I can’t afford not to sell this.”

I would have no problem selling at least some of the wines, so you perhaps enjoy a few (or perhaps wonder - should I have sold this?) but largely get that trip to Italy that maybe would be more worthwhile. There’s always more wine.

Verset sold the wine, take his lead.

“Too much” is always such a subjective level: what is peanuts to some of the wealthy here would pay off the mortgage for others. But it doesn’t have to be ‘all-or-nothing’. Save 1 or 2 to drink, sell the rest. Best of both worlds.

There is nothing wrong with selling something if the dollars you get back will buy you something worth substantially more to you. I’m guessing a trip to Italy enriches your life more than drinking a case of old Cornas or whatever.

Maybe take the bottles you have in this category and pick. Twenty bottles, these five are the ones I’m most interested in drinking, the other 15 buy us a great experience. I don’t know if the numbers work out that way, but it might at least be a framework to approach the question.

Of course, each person would answer the question differently. You might really drill down on whether those proceeds would in fact make the trip happen, or whether you could have the trip anyway by making a different trade off, etc.

I haven’t been in the wine game long enough to be lucky enough to have to make this decision, but I am running into it with a couple of bourbons I own. my thinking with them is that when the money potentially in my pocket becomes something that I could get outrageously more enjoyment out of than I ever could get from opening and drinking the bottle, then thats when I will sell. my example: I have a couple of Van Winkle bottlings that I bought at retail a few years ago, they now command 5-8 times what I paid for them. while I still enjoy bourbon, I don’t know that I have ever enjoyed it $500-$1500 per bottles worth. obviously these are still wines that you are at least as into now as when you bought them id guess, but I would imagine the same theory applies.

on the flip side: with my wines, the price of them is ALWAYS what I paid for them. if they’ve increased in price, thats just money that I saved by being awesome. lol

Edited to add: I think this is a really important question that more people ask themselves than we think when we are asking it ourself. especially with how crazy wine pricing can be now

350 dollars.

I buy to drink and share with others and for no other reason. I do not drink the value; I drink the wine.

I’ve done this a lot lately. I don’t have a $ threshold, but I do like to see 2x-3x return on investment before I pull the trigger and sell. I’ve paid for a new kitchen, and a sizable portion of a house down payment doing that with some wines. In all honesty, there have been times lately that I’ve regretted not having these bottles lying around anymore…but a sweet house makes it easier to get over.

Examples include; Vatan, Gonon, Juge, Rougeard, & Burlotto

Never. A person can be too dead to drink even free wine.

When drinking it fails to give pleasure because you keep thinking about $$$.

I am almost there with Roumier, and a few other things.

Agreed, never.

Depends on all sorts of factors, but for me, a main one is why I initially bought the wine and what do I expect out of it if I keep it vs. selling it.

I have kept/drank over 99% of the wines I’ve bought and have traded/sold a few other the years.

The one that best exemplifies the rationale for selling is this:

  1. I bought a bottle of 2002 La Tache on release ($750) for a special anniversary dinner.
  2. I dreamed of taking it to a bucket list restaurant and share the bottle with my wife for an anniversary we would always remember.
  3. A year or so ago, I told my wife how much a bottle is selling, and she said she could not enjoy the wine knowing how much it is worth (and how much it will be worth when we open it) and would have a much better memory of selling the bottle to pay for a vacation.
  4. Sold it for around the $3.5K range (I think).
  5. She is happy, but I have pings of regret every once in a while.

Anyways, generally, I drink what I buy, and if the value has increased, it makes opening the bottle even more special.

I’ve always purchased with that intention, too, but have just been contemplating selling off a case or so. Maybe just getting older, or realizing that I usually spend more than I should on wine?

I have a friend who collects whisky. Some bottles in his collection, particularly rare Japanese bottles, have appreciated insanely over the past few years. But from the beginning, his approach has been to open and take a taste of every bottle just as soon as he gets his hands on it. His philosophy is: once he allows himself to purchase a bottle with the idea that he might flip it in the future, he’s contaminated his hobby and is no longer able to be honest with himself about whether he’s buying something because he enjoys it or because the market will pay top dollar when he goes to flip it

I allow myself to sell off bottles where my palate has shifted (e.g. Napa cabs). And I certainly don’t begrudge anyone their ability to pay for a house / vacation with appreciated bottles. But I have a great deal of sympathy for his point of view, because I know my capacity for self-deception is quite high if not unlimited.

See, I totally get that. I don’t have a single bottle that I didn’t intend to drink when I bought them. And in the past I’ve kind of looked down on “flipping” wines, or at least doing it strictly for the profit motive. We’ve all sold/traded wines we bought thinking we’d like them and then realized we didn’t. When I paid $25 for '99 Verset in 2003 my only intention was to drink it when it was ready…but I also had no idea it would be selling for $600+ today.

I’d think if you’ve been collecting 30 years and some of the bottles have appreciated that much, you have several times that many in the same maturity and quality range. Certainly, you may have some bottles that you want to try regardless of current market value, but all of them? Maybe some you’d never open due to apprehension over the value? There’s also the option of buying some more sanely priced replacements, of sorts, with part of the windfall.

This is a tough conundrum. It’s one reason I’ve made it a point recently to buy at least enough bottles that if I do want to sell some later I still have some to enjoy. Never buy just one bottle of anything no matter how expensive. Ideally buy at least 3 or 4 or more, as hard as that can be with some of today’s price points.

Right now I have some one off singles of DRC in the cellar that were purchased before the most recent Burgundy craze around 2017 jacked priced up 400% in some cases. That’s really hard because I can’t see selling them even though they are worth significantly more than I’m currently willing to pay to drink any bottle of wine. But since they are singles if I sell them I won’t get to enjoy them, which is why I bought them in the first place.

I think they would have to double or triple from here for me to get to the place where I just had to sell them. But then that also begs the question what am I going to buy to drink instead? If I could get 3 bottles of something I enjoy just as much for selling that 1 bottle, it starts to make more sense. But if I’m just going to be drinking something else thinking about the bottle I could have had, it doesn’t seem worth it.

I wish that were the case, Wes. I’ve always bought a selection of wines to cellar, and then also current things to drink, so I only bought small amounts from each region/producer/vintage to age. I’ve just been pretty disciplined about leaving them alone until they are ready. So with '99 Cornas, which I used as an example, I have a few bottles of Clape and Verset. That’s it. If I had cases of each, it would be easy!

I think about it in terms of whether the money I get from selling the wine would make a real difference or not (e.g. paying for a major purchase or enabling something else other than a bit more cash). For single bottles or generally lower quantities, the answer almost certainly is to not sell, but rather open them on a special occasion. If I had cases lying around, that may be a different story…

it’s just wine and economics. I always wonder if these people who say they look at the wine at what they paid for it and not the current value would sell their appreciated house or stocks for what they paid for them.