Starting a wine collection can be a lovely way to kick off a new, exciting hobby while also giving your taste buds and senses some much needed entertainment and enjoyment. Anyone who likes drinking fine wine will eventually find themselves having a surplus of bottles, so collecting is, after all, an inevitable outcome of being a wine connoisseur.
With that said, if you’ve reached that stage already, here are 4 tips you can use to get the most out of your new collection:
1. Use Professional Storage to Protect Your Wine Investment
If you’re a new collector, then there’s a probability that you don’t yet have the facilities and setup needed to store fine wine in fully optimal conditions. But we don’t blame you, we all need to start somewhere, right? However, poor storage practices can lead to compromised quality over time, so it makes sense to consider a professional storage service such as Octavian Vaults to ensure that your wine investment is kept safe from being spoiled by a less-than-ideal storage environment. Considering the cost of your investment it’s most definitely worth going that extra mile to ensure their safety in storage.
2. Study the Ageing Process
Even if you do opt to store your wine in a state of the art facility to protect it from degradation, it’s still good to become familiar with how the wine ageing process works and what you can do to promote proper ageing in your own wine cellar. Understanding how ageing affects wine quality will put you in a better position to avoid mistakes that could decrease the quality of your collection. As a novice you might not yet be aware that all wines are not meant to be aged. In, fact most store-bought bottles will lose their flavour if stored and aged for prolonged periods.
3. Don’t Start with Premium Selections
Although it may be tempting to spend a large amount on an initial investment and start out with a large collection, to be on the safe side it’s best to begin your collection with less expensive bottles until you’re confident in your ability to store and age the wine properly. If you do decide to buy a highly valuable bottle of mature wine, it’s important to research the product’s price history and provenance.
4. Discover and Learn About the Best Wine Types and Brands
If your goal is to start a wine collection that will serve as a lucrative financial investment, you’ll inevitably need some professional assistance to identify and obtain the relatively rare kinds of wine that are seen as commodities. On the other hand, if you’re not in a rush to make any buying decision, you could take the route of becoming knowledgeable about wine yourself through a wine tour. However, be aware that there will be a significant number of steps involved before you can call yourself an expert.
5. Much More Than Meets the Surface
Collecting wine might seem as simple as setting up a cellar and buying bottles, but as you’ll soon discover, there’s really a lot more to it than that. There are oh-so many factors that influence the quality and value of each individual bottle, so it can be very easy to make value misjudgements and purchasing decisions that aren’t the wisest wine investments.
