Wine Can Make You Rich - Or Poor
You can invest your money in shares, property, or gold. But what about wine?
I ask because a friend of mine collects wine. His collection is growing by the month. He imports wine and - get this - doesn’t drink it. He cellars it. And the other night he forced me along to a wine tasting (well, not forced: it was $5 for a bunch of tasty Spanish wines, and some cheese to boot).
Let me just say that I am one of the three people in the world who didn’t like the winery roadtrip yawnfest Sideways. It was whiny (and winey), slow, that ‘buddy’ was a cheating loser, and it was full of f***ing Merlot.
It wasn’t just the movie. The whole Wine Appreciation thing seemed rather pretentious to me. Who cares about a ‘good nose’, a ’spicy aftertaste’ or a ’strapping varietal’? Just drink the damn thing! In restaurants, I just order whatever is the second-cheapest.
But I went to this wine tasting thing and behold, a Wine Snob emerged! I was murmuring, ‘Good nose,’ and ‘Hints of pear.’ Oh dear. And that was only by the first glass. After the eighth glass, I was ordering bottles and extolling the virtues of the Chivite Reserva. The what-what? It’s a blur.
My friend bought some to add to his budding cellar. I bought some to drink this weekend.
So I learned: Buying wine sensibly and looking after it for years can be an investment. Buying wine on a whim and glugging it down is not an investment in anything but a hangover, but it’s more fun. So I’ll stick with my shares.
What about you? Have you hoarded any wines for a profit?
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Thursday, August 16th, 2007 at 11:05 pm
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I find a good wine is one you don’t get hungover from, of course you have to drink it first to find out ;).
I don’t horde wine away, too much of an alcy, but my mate in France says that parents often buy a case of BeauCastel wine from the year that their children are born, and then give them to their kids on their 18th birthday. It’s kinda like a trust fund, but can be drunk, and she said her Beaucastel case was worth about €4000.
Of course, some years it goes down in value (French are picky sods with their wine), but still nicer than a share certificate, and you can decide which to drink and which to keep (she drank about 3 bottles of her case)
August 16th, 2007 at 11:53 pmHa! No not wines (only domains), but I do enjoy drinking them instead.
August 17th, 2007 at 5:22 amLast time I had wine was in high school.
It came out of a box….in the basement.
It was room temperature….so
we drank it by the cup over ice.
Everything went dark.
The walls were painted “vomit pink” the next morning.
Haven’t touched the shit since….
August 17th, 2007 at 12:31 pmOh dear…
Yeah, I have some pretty bad drinking stories too. For another day.
Since high school! Except we don’t know how old you are now. How long ago was that, Ryan?
August 17th, 2007 at 4:48 pmlol….I’m a quarter century (and a half)
So it wasn’t all that long ago
(under a decade anyway!)
August 18th, 2007 at 4:33 pm