At first I thought $115-$150 a bottle average was crazy for a starter but my room is $85 average a bottle so it is kind of in line with something I would do. I wouldn’t do this kind of thing but it is a novel idea that beginners with some cash might reallly benefit from
Agreed. It’s pretty savvy from both ends, really. Perhaps not for us where we are at today, but for others that have the coin and wanna dive in, it works. I get it, when I get the bug on something, I go deep.
I have had two close friends that pretty much gave me license to pick their starter cellar. They loved it, it was fun, and it’s what they wanted - something crafted at a higher level, and simple for them. And no I did not ruin them with stinky Alfert wine, I used better discretion.
Come January 27 your wish will come true!
I agree it’s like anything else where you don’t want to do anything yourself but want to be a collector. Trump once said in an interview that he really respects books so has them around. Not that he reads, but he likes the image of a learned person. Or people have their homes decorated because they have no particular taste of their own. Or they have their clothes purchased for them for the same reason. Why not a wine cellar? Ready made, you have all the stuff you’re supposed to have, and you don’t make mistakes because a “professional” has done it all for you.
I’m sure people will take advantage of the service. Wine is fashionable these days so why not buy a collection. Every celebrity you can think of is into wine. I’m hoping that in a few years that will pass and some of these collections will be dumped onto the market.
Mystery Box Cellar!
Exactly right, and it has been a thing in Texas for quite some time. Off the top of my head I can think of 3 individuals who left prestigious retail management positions more than a decade ago to go into wine concierge services. Get enough buyers behind you, and you can even set up a full retail operation and start getting your own allocations of the rarities to share directly with your clients. The shrinkage of A-list wine allocations to many American retailers is not just the result of demand from overseas.
I also know several people who use such services. They are not all trophy-collecting wine snobs- on the contrary many of them are quite knowledgeable and know exactly what they want. And at their income levels it makes perfect sense to not only pay someone to do the acquiring, but also find someone who has the connections to get the desired quantities. In this game, paying the lowest price is not the goal- but rather getting your hands on 6 bottles of wine X that is nearly impossible to obtain in even 1-2 bottle quantities.
With the dramatic increases in fraud, this route can also be a safer way to play in the blue chip wine game- provided your consultant knows the business and is above board.
I thought the line about white Burgundy was the kicker… good way to get rid of all of those pox’d Bottles…
I’m not against this at all, it’s a total win for the retailer trying to get rid of inventory they can’t move, quit brilliant actually…
I quickly skimmed the article, so I may have missed it, but how do they ensure provenance/soundness on these older wines? Will they replace defective bottles? If I were a customer with so little time to do my own research, I wouldn’t know much about forgeries, poor handling, etc. I’m not an auction guy, but over the years I’ve heard from some of you here that it can be a crap shoot.
Or are all of these bottles ex-domaine?
Chris - I think that was part of the issue with Koch wasn’t it? He didn’t go to auctions, etc., himself if I’m not mistaken, he just got these bottles through others. And when he found out he got screwed, he got mad. Not sure many other people would know or go to the same lengths he did. Some people might be knowledgeable, but are unlikely to know a fake wine from a “real” one. Alan Meadows didn’t so why should they? Seems like this would be an excellent area for fraudsters.
One of the things that would make this more attractive is that Sotheby’s (as per Maureen) has one of the better reputations for vetting provenance.
Let me be the naysayer here. Sotheby’s retail is expensive and from my experience incompetent. I am still waiting for some replacement bottles for corked wines which they promised me four years ago. I have stopped dealing with the auction side because they turn everything into an unpleasant hassle. If I need a wine I pay someone to deal with them.
So I am sure the initial offering will look tempting, but it won’t take long before they start screwing around with the cellars making less interesting substitutions etc. I suspect given past history, the net value of any cellar will be half of retail
Yeah I cannot think of a better place to buy a pre-pack cellar starter if I’m a Manhattanite than Sotheby’s. As for curated offerings and “buy me a cellar” deals, I know Grailey’s in Dallas has done that for clients, and that most large cellar brokerage firms will curate a cellar for their clientele. That’s nothing new. But buying a fixed price pre-pack at a reasonable cost is pretty novel.
I’m 100 points on this. The target demographic for this service is pretty much diametrically opposed to the philosophies we all share here on the forum. We often like the think ( or give benefit of the doubt) that our take on the wine hobby is the right (and only) one, but that’s just not the case. That pretty much goes for any hobby.
Take socks for instance; i don’t give 2 $h1ts about socks but my wife does so i farm out my sock buying to her. There’s just not enough time in the day to care about socks so i know in the end i’ll get good socks but i dont have to put any effort into it. I pay her in sangiovese so its a win-win. 
This is a good idea in general from both a marketing and convenience perspective. But the surprising thing to me is that when I looked on Sotheby’s web site I couldn’t even find a list of the specific bottles that were in each cellar! I assume that if you actually inquired directly they would be willing to send you that list, but the assumption on the web site appeared to be that people would drop $5K or $10K on wines blind, without even knowing the specific wines they were buying!
I guess that fits with a target audience that is total neophytes and knows nothing about wines and just wants to trust Sothebys, and $5,000 is just not a lot of money to a lot of Wall Street types. So it could work. But I’d be worried that a fair number of bottles would be put in there that would be sold well in excess of market prices. Be a good place to stick some dogs that wouldn’t sell. Although I guess the other argument would be that you want to keep that good customer relationship, someone willing to just hand $10,000 over to you almost blind is a great customer for future relationships.
it didn’t look like any of the bottles were THAT old, even in the collector versions. perhaps i missed it in my read through, but it looks like we were mostly talking 2000s era bottles, with the “famous” vintages being ones in the 10-15 year old range. Im not sure theres gonna be any bottles in there from something like a 47 or even an 82 where provenance is as big a worry?
I think you and JonF are one target. Personally I prefer the learning journey, however there are a lot of people in different circumstances where this may be a good avenue. At the end of the day we want people to share in our passion and this may be an alternative platform to start them on a more organic journey.
Well, one of their example bottles was a 23 yo Bordeaux. Given that it’s at Sotheby’s now, there’s a good chance it has been at an auction house before. Personal prior probability estimate, of course.