Reddit post on collecting wine

[Mike_R1]

I buy to drink, not sell. What I like to drink has changed significantly over the years so I am glad I didn’t go “all in” on any one wine or any one vintage. I would have been loaded up with wine and still have nothing to drink. I suspect that I am one of the older guys on this board (no wisecracks from those that know me please) and I have been working my inventory down for several years. Rarely do I hold more than 500 bottles now. Consumption and purchases are about equal each year (~300) so inventory levels don’t vary much. Wine is just one of the things in my house that my children won’t want. My intention is to gradually reduce my inventory to about 250 bottles of really good, drink now wine and hold that level. That way, maybe what is left will find a home but try finding a home for 1,000 or more bottles. There aren’t many homes available.

I don’t ever want a fellow wine enthusiast to be burdened with estate planning, so since I’m a really nice guy, so I hereby volunteer to serve as the home for those 250 bottles whenever you decide that you no longer want wine bottles in your cellar

[Markus_S]

. . . Chinese market, and that has fallen apart. . . .

FIFY - My very good inside sources advise me that it is really, really bad, even worse than reported. Streets are deserted, businesses are shut down with the expectation that it will last at least two months, schools are shut until at last May and major international businesses are not functioning. Luxury items are easy to avoid under those conditions.

China will be fine. It’s our inflated market giving me the jeebies.

[Bdklein]

. . . Chinese market, and that has fallen apart. . . .

FIFY - My very good inside sources advise me that it is really, really bad, even worse than reported. Streets are deserted, businesses are shut down with the expectation that it will last at least two months, schools are shut until at last May and major international businesses are not functioning. Luxury items are easy to avoid under those conditions.

It’s even a mess here. Houston’s massive and vibrant (and exceptionally tasty) Chinatown is really suffering as people irrationally stay away from Chinese-immigrant-operated restaurants, stores, and malls. It’s sad.

I live on Long Island . My local Chinese takeout has been quieter over the last 2 weeks or so. And our business in Asia is way down, and we don’t see any turnaround for a few months .

[Shay_h_arnoy]

I think its a good post with reasonable points for the general public who might be intrigued by collecting wine.
I buy my wine to drink and I haven’t really thought about selling any of it.
My biggest motivation to buy right now is availability of coupons/deals (wine.com, wineaccess.com, Envoyer). WB has a constant theme of ‘Nice wines are so expensive now, I am glad I bought my Grand cru burgundy/favorite producer years ago’. That has had me thinking that the trend will continue (see for example the post talking about the 2018 pricing) and its worthwhile to invest now for future consumption. I am also bummed out by the transaction fees on auctions as the total price ends up being quite expensive relative to discounts you can find on current release wines.

Should I not have such FOMO and be more patient? (Total cellar size will be 400 or so bottles, though could expand to 750 if pushed to leverage more crates and fewer racks. )

[Betty_C]

I don’t collect wine as an investment, so I don’t find that post particularly helpful.

[Hank_Victor]

So, I’m not going to get rich off of the case of Willamette Pinot under my bed?

[lleichtman]

It would make for an interesting poll here as to who sells wine. I don’t sell any out of a 2500 bottle collection but I wonder, if I still have a lot when I pass on, how will my inheritors sell my wine.

[Joe_G_a_l_e_w_s_k_i]

It seems like he’s talking about people that don’t know anything about wine and did not drink their cellars. I’m positive I’m not in the first camp and I hope I won’t be in the 2nd.

I am kind of two-faced when it comes to wine. There are certain bottles that, due to their price, give me some pause. Will I be able to at least recoup my money if I were to sell it? Because I buy low (meaning I shop around and violate laws 2, 5 and 7) I am fairly confident that I could sell all my wines that cost me more than $100 and in totality at least break even.

For all the wine I bought that was less than $100 a bottle, I bought it to drink it. It is a sunk cost, the expense has been paid. If I die and my heirs are left to deal with 100 bottles of Carlisle, 100 bottles of non-vintage champagne and 100 bottles of stickies, that’s their problem.

Obviously, I’m very good at justifying my behavior.

[Nathan_Smyth]

@Marcu$ Stanley

Best I can hope for is for some of my wines to retains some value

I don’t think demand has much to do with the financial value of wine anymore - I wouldn’t be surprised if we’ve moved on past Peak Wine and are now heading towards Peak Bourbon.

As far as I can tell, wine prices are moved by SUPPLY, or, more specifically, by the relative absence of supply.

If the Blue Nun folks could figure out how to make Keller G-Max by the hundreds of thousands of cases per year, then that style of wine would quickly fall from $2000 down to $20.

And if the Chinese could figure out how to recreate Vosne Romanee somewhere on the Steppes of Central Asia, then DRC-RC would collapse from $30,000 down to $30.

@Reddit Guy

There is precious little American wine that retains its value and even less that appreciates.

California is proving to be capable of producing darned nearly an infinite supply of high-anthocyanin high-fruit-ester high-residual-sugar high-alcohol wines, most of which are largely indistinguishable from one another.

Until somebody finds a combination of terroir & technique in California which produces a truly unique [& irreproducible] wine, the state won’t be able to pose any threat to G-Max or DRC-RC.

[Nathan_Smyth]

@Reddit Guy

Unless you’re an expert… Don’t go to the cheap place. Don’t buy from someone because they’re nice. Don’t deal w random people in a store you like.

@Neal.Mollen

And some of the advice seems just plain weird. Always buy from the same guy at the same shop and don’t shop around for the best price?

Can you remember back when you were a newbie, and you trusted the advice of the salesmen?

Or even the advice of the Wine Spectator?

Salesmen are not just taught but are ORDERED [at the risk of being fired] to move the wine which can’t move itself.

3 bottles of a $5000 GC Burgundy, with 98 points from Meadows and 99 points from Tanzer, will evaporate within five minutes of the email being sent to the Big Lumber guys.

Whereas 200 cases of a $29.99 Garnacho, with 86 points from Jeb Dunnuck, might sit there in the store gathering dust from now until the end of time.

So which wine will the owners & the managers be ordering the sales staff to shove down the throats of the customers?

[And it’ll a fireable offense if a salesman instead suggests the $24.99 Syrah with 95 points from James Suckling.]

[Markus_S]

“If it’s on sale, it’s on sale for a reason and you should probably skip it unless you’re going to drink it that week or that month.”

Gee, I got 10% off a case purchase once. Those wines must be $hit.

[JonathanG]

Wait, you mean those cases of DRC I bought for $25k per bottle aren’t going to make me money? Ah well, anyone want to come over next weekend and help me drink them?

[Marcus_Goodfellow]

One last note, since I’m feeling chippy this morning. The author has a cellar full of German Riesling that he doesn’t think will apprciate? He obviously isn’t drinking at the top end of the riesling scale since the secondary market on top riesling is nuts!

TW

This one makes perfect sense to me. While a few super high end wines have gone through the roof and received a lot of press, the number that have is minuscule. The vast majority of even top quality Rieslings do not appreciate in price much (unless you happen to have been collecting for long enough to have original cases of '59s or some such) and are challenging to sell at all, let alone for a profit. Not that most of us who love and buy Riesling are looking for a profit. No one who truly has a “cellar full of Riesling” has a cellar full of those very few bottlings anyway - there aren’t enough of them made and access is almost impossible, even with a lot of money.

Sarah, I agree with you 100%. And if I ever start selling bottles, it won’t be the German Riesling. I own a bunch but not to much to finish off…

[Marcus_Goodfellow]

Wait, you mean those cases of DRC I bought for $25k per bottle aren’t going to make me money? Ah well, anyone want to come over next weekend and help me drink them?

Yes.

[Jay_Miller]

I bought some Gonon St. Joseph on sale for $29.00 once…I guess I’ll take it back, I had no idea it was dumb move.

Did you buy this to drink or resell it?

I use it as the base for my LaLa counterfeits.

Smart money these days is using LaLas to counterfeit Gonon VV.

Anyway, as others have said this is good advice for people accumulating a large cellar with the intent of selling it. He even specifically includes the implied advice of not worrying about that advice for wine you intend to drink rather than sell (e.g., riesling). Very few of us fit into that category.

[Andy_Sc]

A lot of people here wrote, that the Reddit post is quite irrelevant for them as they buy wines to drink. I think that this depends on the size of your cellar. When you reach a few thousand bottles (lets say 2.5k) it starts to matter as it’s no longer just a few dozen bottles you have to sell below what you paid when your taste changes.

[John_Morris]

Did you buy this to drink or resell it?

I use it as the base for my LaLa counterfeits.

Smart money these days is using LaLas to counterfeit Gonon VV.

[John_Morris]

A lot of people here wrote, that the Reddit post is quite irrelevant for them as they buy wines to drink. I think that this depends on the size of your cellar. When you reach a few thousand bottles (lets say 2.5k) it starts to matter as it’s no longer just a few dozen bottles you have to sell below what you paid when your taste changes.

It doesn’t start to matter unless you think of wine as an investment. Many of us don’t.

[Nathan_V]

Did you buy this to drink or resell it?

I use it as the base for my LaLa counterfeits.

Smart money these days is using LaLas to counterfeit Gonon VV.

Anyway, as others have said this is good advice for people accumulating a large cellar with the intent of selling it. He even specifically includes the implied advice of not worrying about that advice for wine you intend to drink rather than sell (e.g., riesling). Very few of us fit into that category.

I think that part of the point is that once you have a couple thousand bottles you end up in that category whether you like it or not.

I’ve been rebalancing the cellar over the last few years and taking a pretty jagged haircut on almost everything that wasn’t blue chip, or close to it, Burgundy or Rougeard. I think the point is, and to use a recent example, if you have a bunch of Cayuse and you need to sell to create space or rebalance then you won’t get your money back. When I sold some Rhys I lost between 20-40% of the value. I needed the cellar space and had more than I wanted to drink, so I had to just shrug and move on. I have a bunch of Baudry that is pretty much worthless (for now) on the market (although, I bet Pascaline would buy it from me) and this is my version of German riesling.

The key advice is to limit what you buy of most wines to what you will reasonably drink in a given time period as there won’t be any residual value left in them.

The other great advice is instead of always trying to find the lowest W-S price, develop a relationship with a retailer and maintain a rigorous focus on provenance.

[David_Bu3ker]

I have a (very) overlarge cellar. That being said, I have discovered a few things over the last 25 years of active drinking/collecting:

1. Good wine is good wine. Even if it’s not a personal favorite, it will be useful, even if for a party or tasting. Thankfully I have bought very little that I am no longer interested in. A lot of that has to do with buying really good wines, even if not many of the true trophies.
2. Wines that you don’t think can handle significant age will often surprise you. I am in a tasting group that formed in 1974 (I joined in 1998). Guys are pulling wines from their personal storage that they bought decades ago - even things that we would never have thought to age - and they are really interesting to drink. Granted wine making has changed, but since I have never loaded up on the dubious stuff (e.g. high octane Aussie Shiraz), I think I will see similar, if not identical results over the next couple of decades. Wines I bought in the mid-1990s are coming along quite nicely, with lots of time to spare.
3. I bought too many magnums. Oh well. That’s why God made weekends.
4. I have finally started to get to the point where pricing bothers me. This is a good sign. I can drink from the cellar, and just pick up a few things to cover holes (e.g. I am always running out of Chianti), rather than constant accumulation.
5. I had zero intent to sell anything. I have sold a handful of bottles, but it’s not the goal.