The Wine Collector

My post the other day stressed the importance of using a good wine retailer as a source of advice and recommendations. But, how do you find one? What criteria should be considered? Here's my list:

1. Price competitiveness – Are mark-ups fair and consistent? Or do you feel the need to “price check” every purchase against alternative sources?
2. Selection – This encompasses both the number of items carried as well as the quality level and price points within a category. Does the retailer’s relationships enable unique wines to be offered not generally available elsewhere? Are mature wines from private collections available? What about a large and small format bottles?
3. Special orders – Can the retailer accommodate finding a “wish list” of your wines that they may not normally carry? Are there minimum quantities required?
4. Reviews and other data – Does the retailer share all available reviews, good or bad, from major critics to save you the time of researching them independently? Does the retailer author their own reviews? What about comparative retail or auction price data?
5. Staff wine knowledge – How deep is it? Can you easily access advice and recommendations? Do you have a single point of contact that is “your” person? Are recommendations tailored to your interests? Are there frequent tasting or other wine education opportunities (including foreign travel to wine regions or expositions) made available to staff?
6. Ease of ordering – How easy is it to buy? Is their wine inventory online updated in real-time? Is the stock status of the wine disclosed (i.e., in stock or pre-arrival)? Is the purchasing process streamlined and time efficient? Are orders confirmed promptly?
7. Customer service – Is it clear from the retailer’s site that service is a priority or is it an afterthought? Is there a dedicated customer service staff? Is it easy to figure out how to make contact with someone who can solve a service problem? Can you track the status of your orders online? What about online copies of purchase invoices? Is there a robust FAQ section of their web site?
8. Return and cancellation policies – Are there written, published policies governing returns and cancellations (plus all other aspects of conducting business with you)? Can you return a corked bottle or otherwise faulty bottle without a hassle? What about guarantees on receiving pre-arrival purchases?
9. Climate-controlled warehouse – Does the retailer store its inventory of wine in appropriate 55 degree and 60-70% humidity conditions? Can you keep your purchases there at no charge for a reasonable period? What if you need to store for an extended period? What about purchases made elsewhere? Are fees by the case?
10. Shipping – Does the retailer ship to other states? Internationally? Are tracking numbers automatically sent upon shipment? Are you notified about failed delivery attempts? Are shipments insured automatically or are there additional charges? How competitive are the shipping rates? Does the retailer have policies in place to ensure shipping only during appropriate weather conditions? Can the retailer assist in arranging freight forwarding services for large shipments (e.g., 40+ cases)?
11. Local Delivery –Does the retailer offer local delivery services in your area? Are the retailer’s delivery trucks temperature-controlled? Is there a minimum required to have a free delivery? What are the other terms?
12. Selling customer wine – Does the retailer assist customers in selling their wine? Will they buy properly cellared wine for cash or store credit?
13. Other wine collector services – Does the retailer provide other collector services you might need such as in-depth collection-building, on-site wine inventorying, and valuation reports?
14. Management and company stability – Are management backgrounds available on the site? Do they have appropriate business backgrounds? Is there a solid board of directors and/or advisors involved in the business? From press releases and news articles, does the company appear to be growing and financially sound?

If you have another criteria you feel are worth considering, please post a comment.

We had a last minute call yesterday to provide a comment for a story the local ABC affiliate (KGO-TV) was doing called "Bay Area Restaurants Gear Up for New Year's Eve". Click though to visit the station's site and view the video clip with a brief comment from me at the end.

On 12/27/06, Business Week's Cutting Edge podcast posted their interview with me titled "Wine 2.0" in which I discuss some of the new Web 2.0 technology we've deployed on our site to improve the user experience. You can either download it into iTunes or directly to your computer.

In their wine column in The Wall Street Journal today titled “A ‘Delicious’ Quest”(WSJ subscription required), Dorothy Gaiter and John Brecher wrote about their highest rated wines in 2006 – i.e., those earning a “delicious” rating. A 10-step plan to discovering such wines yourself is also offered.

15 of 2,000 wines tasted rated “delicious”

Uhhh…that’s a pretty low ratio (3/4’s of 1% to be exact or 1 of every 133 wines tried). Then I read that the list is “longer than usual.” It’s also worth noting that the list only has 6 wines under $100. While they suggest there are “hundreds of delicious wines out there”, why didn’t they come up with more? To find 200 delicious wines using their success ratio, one would need to taste almost 27,000 wines (200/0.0075).

While one could settle for “very good” (their next highest rating), if there is a better wine to be had, most wine collectors want it. Moreover, the time and cost of going through 133 bottles to find the holy grail is not something even the hard core collector will do (as much fun as it might be to try). So how do you simplify your search?

“Knowledge makes everything simpler” – Law 4 of The Laws of Simplicity by John Maeda

Gathering knowledge, both personally from tasting experiences and by calibrating one’s taste preferences with those of known wine critics, will help you zero in on wine worth trying in the search for “delicious” head-turners.

But I agree with Gaiter and Brecher’s first and last step of their 10-step plan which is to “Find a good wine merchant” to provide advice and guidance. I know that Vinfolio has almost 2,000 wines available and I can guarantee that far more than 15 of them would justify top rankings. We actually assign every customer their own wine specialist to provide advice over the phone or via email (read The Vinfolio Advantage).

Bottom line: Whether you buy from us or from other retailers, Gaiter and Brecher’s recommendation to utilize good wine merchants for guidance will shorten your search.

Many wine collectors are too busy working to finance their wine habit to keep track of what they own and the constant changes caused by buying, drinking, gifting, and selling. But an updated wine inventory enables you to:

1. Select the optimal wine for the next drinking occasion since you know exactly what you own
2. Avoid duplicate purchases of wine
3. Realize you may be owed wine bought on pre-arrival that you never received
4. Locate items more quickly
5. Evaluate how balanced or unbalanced your cellar is
6. Determine which wines may be past maturity and need to be consumed
7. Assess the appropriate insurance value
8. Transfer accurate inventory data to a cellar management software application

The final point facilitates ongoing maintenance and other time-saving benefits (see my post “Cellar management software – why use it?”). After all, the last thing you want to do is to have to repeat the inventory process.

If you don’t have the time to perform an inventory yourself, Vinfolio provides an on-site wine inventorying service anywhere in the U.S.

The Antique Wine Company of London announced last week that it sold 135 bottles of Chateau d’Yquem to a European buyer for £775,000 ($1.5 million). The collection includes every consecutive vintage of Chateau d’Yquem produced between 1860-2003. And as a clever marketing ploy, it also included 9 empty bottles, signed by the director of Yquem, with each label bearing the text “this is to certify that no Chateau d’Yquem was produced in this vintage due to adverse weather conditions.” For the curious, those “bad weather” years were 1992, 1974, 1972, 1964, 1952, 1951, 1930, 1915 and 1910.

Fierce auction bidding

The collection was sold via an auction, which in this case, was exactly the right way to sell it give the rarity of what had been assembled (apparently, not even the Chateau itself holds all of these vintages). With a total of 26 bidders from Europe, Asia, the U.S., and Russia, the drive to own something this unique almost doubled the bidding in the final 24 hours from £400,000 to £775,000.

Other benefits

From reading the press articles on The Antique Wine Company site, a few other benefits come with the purchase:

1. A pair of cabinets custom-made to house the collection by well-known British furniture designer, David Linley. Built using American black walnut, a Decanter.com article referenced these as costing £50,000 each.
2. Two-day trip to Bordeaux with the Director of the Antique Wine Company, Stephen Williams, to visit Chateau d’Yquem and receive the royal treatment.
3. A degree of personal press coverage and notoriety. The successful bidder is to be announced publicly in January.
4. The opportunity to throw a very exclusive party in the future.

A word on the price

A December 2006 Robb Report article (scroll down this page) promoting the collection had a subtitle stating “Price starting at $2.5 million.” Given that the selling price obtained of $1.5 million was billed as “unprecedented” by The Antique Wine Company, just another reminder about doing a little analysis before bidding (see prior post, “Sanity checking” auction lot estimates).

The same Robb Report article made reference to a “smaller” Yquem collection having sold for $1 million in 1996 (also by The Antique Wine Company). I couldn’t find any corroboration of this in a quick Google search but found a 2004 thread on the Mark Squire’s Wine Bulletin Board titled “129 vintages of Yquem is a beautiful sight to see!”. It references a sale by The Antique Wine Company of Yquem covering the period 1868-1997. There’s no mention of this on The Antique Wine Company site (or elsewhere). Perhaps the price achieved was not high enough to be helpful in selling this new collection?

The New Yorker Book of Wine Cartoons is one of my favorite Christmas presents received yesterday. Collecting wine should be fun and the 90 pages of wine-related cartoons in this book will bring a smile to any wine lover's face.

The book, published in 2004, appears to be out of print now but you can still buy it used on Amazon (which is where mine came from). Or, just pay a visit to the New Yorker's site, Cartoonbank.com, search for "wine" and view all 219 wine cartoons.

P.S. The eRobertParker.com site also has a wine cartoon of the week (site subscribers only though).

If you want a chance at buying new up-and-coming California wines before Robert Parker or the Wine Spectator give them a high score and they become scarce or unavailable even at much higher prices, then read the (free) weekly Wilder Side of California from Vinfolio's own Doug Wilder.

Robert Parker's latest Wine Advocate (issue #168) was just released and there are a few notable items to mention:

1. The 2003 Scarecrow Cabernet achieved a Parker score of 98 (only 8 wines had a 98 or higher including Colgin, Araujo, Abreu and Shafer Hillside Select). Scarecrow is now unavailable. However, Doug first wrote about the 2003 Scarecrow in issue 49 of the Wilder Side of California published on April 28, 2006, rating it a 97. Vinfolio offered the wine for sale then (as it does with all wine Doug rates).


2. The 2004 Kapcsandy Family Winery State Lane Vineyard ($90 on Vinfolio's site) just got upgraded by Parker to a 95 from an initial score of 91-93. Doug published his review of this wine in issue 78 of the Wilder Side of California on November 17, 2006. He rated it a 96 despite knowing of the earlier lower score of Parker. Being a critic is about having an opinion and Doug has one.

I admit I'm biased so here's a third-party comment from a fan, "In praise of Doug Wilder," just posted on the Mark Squires Wine Bulletin Board. What are you waiting for? You can sign up just for Doug's free weekly email or simply register with Vinfolio to get both his email and our other wine offers.

Bottom line: Being a wine collector is about experimenting with new wine recommended by trusted parties, whether it be Doug or your local retailer. There's no need to wait for the "big" critics to provide their endorsement.

P.S. Also read Doug's blog, Free Run Juice, for additional commentary on wines worth noting.

Self-service wine storage

Self-service wine storage facilities are the norm in the U.S. Since they are all likely to have appropriate temperature controls and security precautions, which factors differentiate one from another?

1. Price – See my recent post, “The economics of off-site wine storage”, to understand why this isn’t as simple as it may seem.
2. Proximity to your home – Remember, you will have to drive to and from the facility to drop off or pick up wine. Depending on how you value your time, this may be the single most important factor.
3. Hours of access – Is the facility open weekends, evenings, or 24 hours using an access code?
4. Staff to help load/unload – Is there someone to help you transfer wine from your car to your locker, locate cases in your locker, and bring them to your car?
5. Receiving of packages – Can you have wine sent directly to your facility? Are there fees for this service?
6. Extras – Back-up power generators may be important in hot weather climates. Some facilities have an events room for socializing with other customers.

Full-service wine storage

Your alternative to self-service wine storage is full-service storage. There are fewer providers and you may not have one in your area (although you can use such services remotely in conjunction with Fedex). For full service wine storage facilities, here are differentiators to consider:

1. Price – Pricing is almost always “per case, per month” so it’s easy to understand. However, there may be fees for additions and/or removals so make sure to ask.
2. Inventorying – Wine should be inventoried upon arrival and tracked in some way that you can access remotely, ideally via a web-based software program.
3. Barcoding – Bottles should be individually barcoded when inventoried to ensure they aren’t accidentally mixed up with someone else’s wine.
4. Initiating transfers – How easy is to set up a transfer in or out? How much advance notice is needed?
5. Arrivals notifications – Are you notified by email automatically whenever wine is received and added to your account?
6. Pick-up and delivery – Local pick-up and delivery services should be offered (check pricing) as well as the ability to drop off or pick up wine in person at the facility.
7. Shipping services – Will they ship wine using Fedex/UPS or coordinate transfers with freight forwarders?
8. Extras – Will they pack up wine at your home for transfer to their facility? Will they inventory your wine stored elsewhere (e.g. home) too?

Note: Vinfolio offers full-service wine storage. Click here to learn more.

In 2006, the global wine auction market grew an impressive 45% to over $240 million. These statistics are a good barometer for sales of fine and rare wine by private collectors, the source of most wine sold in the auction channel. Keep in mind, however, that private collectors sell through other channels too, including to retailers and even restaurants (often for dining “credits”).

Vinfolio, for example, just signed a contract today to purchase a private cellar in the Midwest for over $400,000. Here’s a quick summary how our process works:

1. We price the cellar based on our expected retail selling prices (which are almost always higher than auction averages).
2. Our fee, which is effectively our retail margin earned when we later sell the wine, is factored in and the seller receives the net amount.
3. Payment is made as soon as the wine can be inspected (which in this case is at the customer’s home by staff we fly out).

The result: the seller nets more, is paid faster, and the transaction is completed far quicker than with an auction house.

There are no statistics on the volume of fine wine sales made by collectors to retailers or other alternative channels. My guess is that it’s greater than the auction house channel and a clear substitute for private collectors to consider who currently default to thinking “auction” when they think “time to sell.” Hopefully we can change that mindset.

For details on individual auction firm performance in 2006, please see the Decanter.com article “US/UK auction roundup” or the Wine Spectator article “2006 Wine Auctions Break the $200 million mark."

Whether you build a custom cellar or buy wine storage cabinets, you have to decide on your home wine storage capacity. Keep in mind that there’s a difference between what you need and what you may want to have available. Determining factors for what you need include:

1. Your rate of consumption (including last minute dinner parties)
2. The breadth of your wine interests. How much variety do you want to be able to select from?
3. The frequency and ease of restocking (either from off-site storage or new purchases)

My cellar as an example

My wife and I drink wine often and frequently have friends over or take bottles to restaurants (which is easy in San Francisco). I like experimenting and would always prefer to open 6 different wines for an event instead of 6 bottles of the same wine. Most of my wine is stored at Vinfolio’s warehouse so it’s easy to bring more home. Considering these factors, my home cellar probably only needs to be a few hundred bottles and I know I could easily live within that limit (in reality, it holds up to 800 bottles).

The role of off-site wine storage

Most wine collectors get hooked on buying and tend to exceed the capacity of their home storage sooner or later. That’s when off-site storage is useful to capture the “overflow.” As an aside, Vinfolio has some customers who have moved in the past year and have decided to downscale the space allocated to their home cellar because of the ease of having wine delivered frequently from our wine storage facility.

Bottom line: The home wine storage capacity you need is totally unrelated to the total size of your wine collection.

The following thread titled “Heritage Wine Co. – cover your ears. Retailer flames out of control” from Mark Squire’s Wine Bulletin Board on eRobertParker.com has to be read to be believed. At the time of this post, it has attracted over 100 comments in less than a day.

The retailer’s overreaction to a customer complaint is inappropriate but what bothers me more is his failure to take responsibility for his own pricing mistake. In this case, it was a small dollar amount too but even if it weren’t, one way to learn from mistakes is to have to bear the cost of them (financially or otherwise).

Everyone makes mistakes. For example, we mispriced a cult cabernet last week at $295 when it was supposed to be priced at $350. We didn’t realize the error until a customer had already bought 6 of our 12 bottles online. Of course, we honored the transaction. The only discussion we had was to determine how the error was introduced so we can avoid repeating it.

Do you have a story to share of wine retailer behavior that provoked a negative reaction from you? Please add it as a comment (no need to post retailer names if you’d rather not).

P.S. For another post on retailer practices, read “Returning faulty wine to retailers.”

Most wine collectors claim they’re not interested in selling any of their wine but many ultimately do. Here are some common reasons:

1. Tastes have changed, prefer other categories of wine now
2. Overbought, need to sell before wine is past maturity
3. Didn’t like a wine upon trying it and don’t want remaining bottles
4. Financing drinking with gains from sales
5. Value appreciation, too expensive to drink
6. Divorce, death and taxes
7. Balancing cellar between red and white
8. Trading to fill holes in verticals
9. Need cash for a special project or living expenses
10. Changed entertainment style, prefer large bottles over 750mls
11. Medical conditions
12. Charitable donations
13. Moving
14. Emotional connection to certain wines have faded (see the Wine Spectator’s James Moleworth’s blog post, “How wines stay in my cellar”, which inspired this post).

Of course, if you do decide to sell, please consider Vinfolio's personal selling service.

Bloomberg Markets veteran wine and spirits writer, Elin McCoy, published an article last week titled “Home wine cellars, no longer just for geeks, soar in popularity.” It took me a minute to realize that the wine “cellars” in her article were what I would call wine storage cabinets, units, or even refrigerators. But let’s not quibble about semantics. The statement which floored me was this one:

"A 2005 Association of Home Appliance Manufacturers study found that 4.3 million households in America now have wine cellars, with more than 3 million purchased since 2003."

Wow! That’s a lot of households who cared enough about their wine to purchase a dedicated “appliance” to protect it. I suspect many will catch the wine collecting bug once they take this initial step. Hopefully, they will start reading this blog and managing their wine with our free VinCellar online cellar management software.

P.S. Please see my prior post "Wine cellars: Beauty over function” for comments on the custom cellar market.

No wine collector can ignore the market impact of Robert Parker’s reviews and scores. My last post was about a recent Bloomberg article written by Elin McCoy but she is better known to me for authoring the best-selling The Emperor of Wine: The Rise of Robert Parker, Jr., and the Reign of American Taste.

While her book was first published in mid-2005 and in paperback in mid-2006, it will remain a classic as it delivers rare personal insights into Robert Parker and his abilities. Personally, even though I’ve never met him, I felt like I had a personal connection after reading the book and a greater admiration for what he’s achieved.

Bottom line: It’s an entertaining “must read” for any wine collector or enthusiast if you’re looking for a good last minute holiday gift item.

After the 50-case 1982 Mouton-Rothschild lot sold for $1.05 million at auction last month (see "Sold for $1.05 million!") for well over its market value, now there is another mega-lot up for bid on Wine Commune by wine retailer Aabalat. The 11-bottle lot consists of an 11-year vertical of Cheval Blanc in 18 liter bottles (known as Melchiors). It’s being offered with an auction estimate of $700,000 - $875,000.

That seemed a little high so I did a pricing analysis below based on “hard” data to illustrate how any wine collector could “sanity check” auction estimates and determine a “fair” bidding level. The various factors to evaluate in assessing value may vary based on what’s being offered but the concept of grounding any assessment with data does not.

750ml baseline pricing

Using Vinfolio’s Wine Price File data on wine auction prices, I first calculated the expected value of an 11-year vertical of 750ml bottles using average auction prices from 2006 for vintages from 1995-2001 and average US retail prices for vintages from 2002-2005 (these vintages were too young to have generated sufficient auction data). The value came to $3,773 for the 11 750ml bottles. Since there are 24 750ml bottles in a Melchior, this translates into $90,552 for the same 198 liters of wine, but in the 750ml bottle format.

Factoring in a premium for larger bottle size

Because of scarcity and the superior aging potential of larger bottle sizes, they usually sell for a premium on a per-750ml-equivalent basis. That premium tends to be higher the greater the bottle size. But how large of a premium is justified?

I then went back and did the same pricing analysis but selected the largest size bottle for each vintage on which market data existed. For 1995-2000, I used average auction prices and for 2001-2005, I used average retail prices. The mix of “largest possible” bottles included 3 3L prices, 5 6L prices, 1 9L price, and 2 18L prices. I then normalized the prices to generate a value for an 18L bottle in each vintage using the appropriate multiplier. This methodology based on “big bottle” proxies translated into a value of $133,723.

My final stab at justifying the maximum possible bid was to look at the two vintages where retail data existed for both an 18L bottle and a 750ml bottle and examine the inherent premium built in for the larger bottle size. The two resulting multiples were 1.35x and 2.61x. The approach above enabled the bottle size multiple to reach 1.48x ($133,723/$90/552) so let’s be generous and assume we can go to 2x (about the average). Using 2x the $90,552, you could justify $181,104 as your bid.

The charitable cause factor

If I assume the seller of the wine is not going to sell its wine at below market value, then the 20% charitable contribution from the net proceeds of the auction needs to be factored in to the expected bid level. This translates to a bid amount of $226,380 (which provides fair market value to the seller and a bit over $45,000 to the charity).

Other factors considered but not used

• The vertical factor - Many people wrongly believe there should be large premiums for selling a group of wines as a vertical. The only way I’ve ever approached valuing verticals is with a “sum-of-the-parts” analysis (just as was done above). The premium, if any, would be a function of the number of years in the vertical and the scarcity of the component vintages. For a vertical of the most recent 11 years, I don’t think this factor is relevant.

• Bottle condition and provenance – Since these are very recent vintages and bottles are stated to be in good cindition, this doesn’t affect value.
• Auction buyer’s premium – My assumption here is that there isn’t a premium added to the bid as this is a charity auction conducted by Wine Commune. But if I were serious about bidding, I would double check, and if present, it would lower my bid accordingly.

What’s with the high auction estimate?

Given that the most generous bid we could justify was $226,380, how did the estimate reach $700,000 - $875,000 and how did the opening bid get set at $490,000? I suspect the hope is that a wealthy person interested in supporting the charitable causes might step up. Even at the minimum bid of $490,000 less 20% to the charity, it would appear to be a very profitable way to sell wine for Aabalat. However, if charitable giving is the primary reason for buying (as it seems like it would be at the minimum bid level), then why wouldn’t the party just skip the bid and give the money directly to the charity?

As of now, there are no bids placed (you have until 12/20/06 at 11:45 EST) and my guess is that anyone interested in just the wine is not going to bother.

Lessons learned: If you want to bid for wine at auction, do your homework.

Thanks to Alder at Vinography and his post titled “For the billionaire wine lover who has everything” which inspired this post.

In the past month, I've been interviewed for one radio program and one podcast. A download and link, respectively, are now posted on Vinfolio's news page.

Gene Burns, a San Francisco icon, interviewed me for his popular weekly radio show on KGO called Dining Around. Dallas-based Jim White interviewed me for his Savor the Flavor podcast. Jim, along with his wife, Vicki, are the co-founders of Savor Dallas, an annual two-day food and wine experience in Dallas.

When Amazon.com started, I recall the debate about whether consumers would buy books online. I just checked the growth in my own personal ordering with Amazon over the past 10 years (yes, I could do that in about one minute). In 1996, I placed three orders and so far this year, I have placed 47 orders (including one with Amazon UK). The wide selection, convenience of ordering, and reliable delivery system kept me and many others coming back, helping build Amazon’s current $16 billion market capitalization.

Despite the checkered history of Wine.com as an early pioneer in online wine sales, I believe there is pent-up demand by consumers to buy wine online for the same reasons which have driven Amazon’s growth: greater selection and convenience for consumers. The benefits to consumers are simply compelling.

The real question is why haven’t online wine sales been more robust and clear market leaders emerged? The constraints seem to be:

1. Restrictive interstate shipping laws that differ by state essentially create trade barriers for national retailers. Deep-pocketed wholesalers want all alcohol transactions to be face-to-face and have lobbied heavily to keep or tighten restrictions further. The creation of the Specialty Wine Retailers Association in early 2006 is dedicated to changing these laws for the benefit of consumers.
2. Risk of minors purchasing online. New services for online age verification such as Idology’s will increasingly be adopted by wine retailers (including Vinfolio) and defuse this argument by wholesalers once and for all.
3. Fragmented industry. The wine retailing industry consists primarily of family-run, privately owned business that tend to be risk averse and laggards in applying the latest technology to their business operations. The inability to sell easily across state lines in itself has stunted the development of larger players.
4. Perishable nature of wine. It’s simply more complicated to deal with the logistical aspects of handling and transporting wine than books or electronics.

Bottom line: Online wine retailers are making progress and a future of “wine without borders” is achievable with a sustained effort. Wine collectors should support legislative changes in their home states to facilitate development of a true national wine market.

Between changing weather conditions, occasional mishaps by Fedex/UPS, and deliveries being attempted when no adult is there to sign for them, there are plenty of factors for a retailer to consider when defining a comprehensive wine shipping policy. I believe Vinfolio’s shipping policy sets the “gold standard” in protecting our customers’ wine during shipping. Read it and tell me if you agree. Or, if you have suggestions for improvement, post a comment or email me.

A few further observations on our policy:

1. Our policy is not mandatory. It’s a “policy” consisting of a set of related recommendations. You can override the policy at your own risk. After all, it’s your wine when it’s shipped, not ours.
2. Fedex tracking numbers are emailed automatically when a shipment is picked up (we use Fedex exclusively). Any Fedex problem making a delivery automatically generates an “exception” email to both our customer and Vinfolio’s Customer Service department. We investigate each one by calling or emailing our customer and/or Fedex.
3. Free shipment insurance – Wine in transit (via Fedex, our delivery van, or a freight forwarder) is fully insured for up to $250,000 when arranged by us.

Do you know how the wine bought at your favorite retailer was stored and transported on its way to them? My last two posts on shipping wine from retailers to you assume the wine was in good condition when purchased. What if it wasn’t? There’s no way to know for certain unless you ask your retailer. Even then, they may not know the storage and transportation practices of every commercial supplier.

It seems incredible that members of the wine trade wouldn’t take all reasonable steps to protect wine from being damaged while in the supply chain. I suspect most are diligent but James Suckling wrote a post in his Uncorked blog called “Reefer Madness” last month referencing an example where a wine importer shipped 250 cases of 2001 Pio Cesare Barolo from Italy to Canada in a steel sea container (like the one in the photo) without temperature control. The wine probably spent 20-30 days on the water and, not surprisingly, retailers supplied by the shipment have reported leakage in about 20 cases. But who knows whether the rest of the wine is as pristine to drink as it could have been if shipped properly?

Bottom line: Savvy consumers and wine collectors should question their favorite retailers on this topic. Or, just observe how your retailer cares for its own wine inventory. No doubt this is closely correlated with how much scrutiny they have applied to their supply chain.

Shipping wine long distances by Fedex or UPS ground at certain times of the year can be a risky proposition due to hot or cold weather extremes along the way (even with a styrofoam shipper). Nevertheless, wine collectors trying to avoid the higher costs of shipping 3-day or better often try to make some assessment of the delivery route taken by the carrier to decide which service level to choose.

A recent thread on the Mark Squires Wine Bulletin Board on eRobertParker.com titled "Some way to figure out UPS ground route?" contains a user post referencing a very cool universal package tracking tool for major carriers (Fedex, UPS, USPS, and DHL/Airborne) that combines Google maps with RSS technology. Every time the package moves and is scanned, you get an instant update to your RSS "reader" or "aggregator" and a new segment is added to a map charting the package's progress towards its destination. While this is unfortunately not a predictive tool, a few experiments during safe times of the year will illustrate the common delivery path taken from your favorite out-of-state online retailers to your door.

P.S. If you don't know what RSS is yet, it's time to find out. Click here for a non-technical explanation and also visit Vinfolio's RSS feeds page to see how we use it to provide instant updates of new wine inventory.

You have two basic choices for off-site wine storage: self-service locker facilities or full service wine storage. The vast majority of wine storage providers in the U.S. are self-service, mainly because they’re easier to operate since you’re doing virtually all of the work. Full service wine storage providers exist in markets like New York and San Francisco but serve geographically dispersed customers since there’s no need to ever visit the facility.

Self-service facilities are basically specialized real estate plays as the customer is renting “space.” The pricing methodology is usually expressed as a monthly rate for a locker of a given case capacity. For example, $40 per month for a 40-case locker. Mentally, you quickly calculate $1.00/case per month and it’s this $1.00/case that you remember. However, often your particular 40 cases won’t fit. Maybe you can only fit 32 because you have a mixed group of cases of different sizes (like most of us) and the “estimate” was based on a standard size (usually the smallest). This means your $1.00/case is now $1.25/case ($40/32).

What about the effective cost per case before your locker reaches its capacity. For example, even if you start with 15 cases, you are still paying $40 a month! This equates to $2.67/case per month ($40/15). You get the point.

The alternative is to use full-service storage which is almost always charged for by the case, whether you have 1, 15, 40, or 500. In short, you only pay for what you use.

Applying the above thinking is fundamental to making an educated comparison between using self-service or full-service wine storage as it normalizes the differences in pricing models. You can then decide which option appeals to you and what the real additional cost of the full service approach (if any) might be.

Note: Vinfolio offers full service wine storage. Click here to learn more.

If you insist on buying wine as an investment despite my post of yesterday (see ”Pleasure before profit – Thoughts on investing in wine”), then take the following factors into account to maximize your chances of a positive outcome:

1. Choose “investment grade” wine - To be a candidate, the wine should have been rated well by recognized critics, preferably 95+ points by someone like Robert Parker, Stephen Tanzer, or Allen Meadows. It also helps if the producer’s wines have a proven track record for improving in the cellar.
2. Pay attention to a wine’s supply and demand factors -This includes looking at the absolute case production in a given vintage as well as where the wine is in its lifecycle. If a wine is close to its peak drinking window, it’s time to sell as it won’t get any better and demand is likely to fall.In short, a wine held too long will begin to fade and so will its value. See my prior post on “An explanation of fine wine prices.”
3. Buy competitively - The wine industry can be very inefficient, in part because of crazy state regulations left over from the repeal of Prohibition. The average retail price spread for a wine on Winesearcher.com is 2x from high to low. If you don’t buy competitively, you will be “in the hole” from day one.
4. Inspect your purchase– Verify that you receive what you purchased and ensure that the condition of bottles is satisfactory. I once received a case of the wrong vintage of a very expensive grand cru red Burgundy. Unintentional shipping errors happen.
5. Exploit arbitrage opportunities - For example, if you can secure a spot on the mailing lists of cult California wineries offering highly allocated wine, you can immediately sell any purchase for a profit. But there are probably less than two dozen of these wines and the wineries typically have multiyear, if not 5-10 year, waiting lists.
6. Sell efficiently - Selling wine typically incurs transaction costs which are very high in comparison to financial securities. A sale transaction with a major auction house may carry a fee overhead of 30%-35% (or more) of the market value. Vinfolio’s personal selling service offers a very efficient alternative with retail-based pricing and fees as low as 13%.
7. Target up-and-comer wines - One reason Vinfolio has a full-time reviewer, Doug Wilder, based in Napa Valley, is to discover and review promising new wines before they are reviewed by mainstream critics (that may generate price increases). Read Doug’s free weekly wineletter, the Wilder Side of California, and his blog, Free Run Juice.
8. Protect your investment – The “carrying costs” for a wine investment can be significant but are unavoidable for protecting your investment from a catastrophic loss. In particular, store wine in a temperature-controlled environment at all times which typically costs $1/bottle to $3/bottle per year at an offsite storage facility. In addition, insure your wine which costs about 0.4% - 0.5% of the market value per year.

One big wild card

Should a major wine critic later downgrade his rating of a wine you own, you’ll see the value of your wine fall. Conversely, upgrades raise the value. The only problem is that this volatility is completely out of your control.

Drink your losses

Buy wine you’d be glad to drink so you can convert your losses into gains!

A reporter for U.S. News and World Report, Alex Markels, forwarded me an article that he just wrote called “Uncork the lowest prices: A global glut of wine grapes has connoisseurs and bargain hunters stocking their cellars.”

It’s not news that there’s a lot of undifferentiated wine made worldwide that producers can’t sell and whose suppliers might be “desperate” to unload. This is the normal state of affairs. Therefore, statements like “markdowns nationwide have made this the best time to stock up in more than a decade” are a bit overreaching. Most of this wine is low-priced “plonk” and certainly not worth cellaring with any expectation of improvement.

Even the comment that “prized vintages once available only to restaurants and collectors are suddenly in plentiful supply (albeit still at relatively high prices)” doesn’t fit our experience. We have to press suppliers constantly for larger allocations of desirable wines (or be forced to consider “parcels” of undesired wine to get what we really want – usually we just pass).

I suspect the Cakebread Vine Hill Cabernet mentioned in the article (which retails for $90-$100) was “tied” to Applejack Wine & Spirits' purchases of other Cakebread wines. Or maybe it’s just hard to sell a $90-$100 cab without a critic’s review (the last published review I could find was an 87 from Wine Spectator for the 2000 vintage).

Bottom line: The “bargains” in lower-priced wine will never disappear. Take your time and fill your cellar with high quality selections.

Do you know how to pronounce "Montrose"? Most of us would pronounce the "t", but in French, you would not.

Regardless of your level of wine knowledge, without some understanding of multiple foreign languages, you will inevitably be stumped at the right way to pronounce foreign wine names. That's where online audio files of wine names come in handy. The folks at The Oenofile Network Wine Blog did a quick review of online resources in their recent post titled Wine Pronounciation Guide. Check it out.

Localwineevents.com, the leading site for tracking wine events happening all over the world (including your own city), is running an informal poll of your favorite wine blogs.

The Wine Collector is currently in the top 10 so please vote for us (and tell your friends) if you like the content of this blog.

True wine collectors buy wine to drink -- not for potential financial gains. They may buy excess quantities of a given wine to sell later but this is usually only to help finance their wine consumption. In short, the “dividends” from wine collecting are paid in pleasure, not profit.

To the extent one’s wine appreciates in value, I believe that this is purely a secondary benefit to the typical wine collector. It’s great to know you can sell your wine for a profit should you need the cash or want to replace it with other wine because your tastes have changed. The robust resale market may even encourage the general tendency to “overbuy.” After all, why not have the option to drink a little more when you know you can always sell any time to recover your money?

Wealth Manager magazine interviewed me for an article published yesterday titled “You don’t have to own a vineyard to invest in the fruit of the vine.” This is a well-written, comprehensive article targeted at investment advisors whose clients ask them about investing in wine. The principal focus is on the investment potential of buying wine futures. As background, you might with to review my prior post titled “Wine futures and pre-arrivals: what’s the difference?

In tomorrow’s post, I will provide some advice on how to maximize your chances for financial gain and point out risk factors to be aware of if you choose the wine investment route.