I remember in 2007 I had lunch with a client of mine from Domaine Serene (private sales client) and he brought 6 wines from his cellar and we tasted them and he sent me home with the partial bottles. When I shared this experience a couple of weeks later with Ken Evanstad he asked me to confirm the bottles as one of the ones we had was "worth" $4K at the time. I was astonished at the generosity of my client - we had a 4-hour lunch of great food, conversation and wine and I had no idea and he obviously didn't share the wines value during lunch. He was a joy to know and unfortunately passed away much too soon.
Good that you both got to enjoy those wines. I think anyone of a certain age (me included) who has a sizeable wine cellar should be thinking about sharing it as often as possible with as many appreciative friends as possible.
That is a pickle. If certain wines continue to raise in value well beyond their drinking window, can we even say it's "best" of both worlds to drink it at any stage, when it will just skyrocket to yet greater value heights in the far future? Considering how few bottles this actually happens to, maybe we just allow them to be currency vs. culinary. The true tragedy is that these will always be the best tasting wines from the best growing sites on planet Earth. Probably the only way to reverse this trend is to tackle the extreme wealth inequality gaps, so a) we don't *require* philanthropy from mega-rich individuals to keep the world functioning and b) hardly anyone could easily afford such nutty price tags and so products with an elite reputation like wine don't become quite so "collectible". As our financial systems work right now, coupled with human nature, there isn't likely any way to avoid this.
What goes up (eventually) will come down, including overpriced collectible wines. But when? No clue. Tackling wealth inequality is a big challenge and a worthy one, but I wouldn't expect that devaluing overpriced wine would be a major result should it ever happen. I think it's more likely that climate change will make the current great vineyards of France less and less able to produce extraordinary wines. My search here in the Pacific NW is to find new great wines from what may now be seen as marginal (or at least off-the-radar) wine regions.
I remember in 2007 I had lunch with a client of mine from Domaine Serene (private sales client) and he brought 6 wines from his cellar and we tasted them and he sent me home with the partial bottles. When I shared this experience a couple of weeks later with Ken Evanstad he asked me to confirm the bottles as one of the ones we had was "worth" $4K at the time. I was astonished at the generosity of my client - we had a 4-hour lunch of great food, conversation and wine and I had no idea and he obviously didn't share the wines value during lunch. He was a joy to know and unfortunately passed away much too soon.
Good that you both got to enjoy those wines. I think anyone of a certain age (me included) who has a sizeable wine cellar should be thinking about sharing it as often as possible with as many appreciative friends as possible.
That is a pickle. If certain wines continue to raise in value well beyond their drinking window, can we even say it's "best" of both worlds to drink it at any stage, when it will just skyrocket to yet greater value heights in the far future? Considering how few bottles this actually happens to, maybe we just allow them to be currency vs. culinary. The true tragedy is that these will always be the best tasting wines from the best growing sites on planet Earth. Probably the only way to reverse this trend is to tackle the extreme wealth inequality gaps, so a) we don't *require* philanthropy from mega-rich individuals to keep the world functioning and b) hardly anyone could easily afford such nutty price tags and so products with an elite reputation like wine don't become quite so "collectible". As our financial systems work right now, coupled with human nature, there isn't likely any way to avoid this.
What goes up (eventually) will come down, including overpriced collectible wines. But when? No clue. Tackling wealth inequality is a big challenge and a worthy one, but I wouldn't expect that devaluing overpriced wine would be a major result should it ever happen. I think it's more likely that climate change will make the current great vineyards of France less and less able to produce extraordinary wines. My search here in the Pacific NW is to find new great wines from what may now be seen as marginal (or at least off-the-radar) wine regions.
You are describing the super rich - and they don't care.
Maybe so. But not that long ago you didn't have to be super rich to taste these wines.
True. My wine interests - based on my finances - have changed a lot in the past 5 to 10 years.