I was reading Asimov’s blog the other day at The Pour where he talked about a story he’d read in Wine Spectator (you can find the link on his blog) about how one rich collector-investor is suing another rich collector-investor over something or other. (Decanter actually wrote about it too.)

The more I read it, the more I thought, Who cares? And suddenly it hit me:

I AM SOooo OVER COLLECTOR-INVESTORS!!!

I used to cover them for the Spectator back in the day. There was the über-rich Palestinian from La Jolla, the Texan with one of the country’s most massive collections (he eventually became a born-again Christian and gave up drinking), the Chicago medical tool manufacturer who kept his own stash at Fleur de Lys, a clutch of wealthy Memphisites (Mephistos?), the Bay Area dentist who spent $30,000 on a party for his wine-drinking friends, the Central Coast guy who had every vintage of Mouton-Rothschild made in the last 150 years, the University of California professor who gave America’s greatest tastings, the Hollywood producer who shacked up with a major star, and so on. These guys loved getting their names and, better yet, their pictures in the Spectator, so they gave me access.

I respected their knowledge and passion, and most of them actually were very nice people. But when I left Spectator for Wine Enthusiast, they stopped returning my phone calls — literally overnight. I realized that whatever relationships I’d thought we’d had were fantasies on my part. They had no use for me once I couldn’t get them into W.S. They were, in the truest sense, snobs.

Those vestigial memories were resurrected, unpleasantly, when I read Eric’s blog. But something else left a sour taste in my mouth, and it was this: Not only am I over collectors, but the very notion of collecting for investment seems somehow anachronistic and vulgar to our times and sensibility. And so does covering collecting, in the journalistic sense, with those awful charts about auction bottle prices, as if wine were pork bellies. Maybe some people get off on that stuff, but I think most people read wine magazines to read about wines, winemakers, wine regions and so on.

Who cares what Lafite went for at the latest Christie’s auction? Have you ever bought Lafite at an auction? Neither have I. Do you think you ever will? Neither do I. Do you know anyone who has? Neither do I. I’m glad Christie’s and all the others exist and provide jobs for people, but the whole notion of wine as an investment commodity, which is repugnant enough, is made all the more distasteful for the state of the economy, when so many people are hurting. I’m sure conspicuous consumption will always exist, but why give it attention and even praise? These “collectors” are marginalized outliers, and the results of their venal activities need not concern the true wine lover.

Look: Collecting wine for the sake of properly aging it is a beautiful thing. Everybody should do it, to the extent they have the space and can afford to. But collecting for the sake of trading at auction isn’t really collecting; it’s hoarding.

Anyway, forgive the rant. Had to get that off my chest. Tomorrow, a more pleasant topic.

Great opinion piece in yesterday’s Times on counterfeiting expensive wines. Seems there’s a burgeoning market on eBay for empty bottles of luxury wines, like 1982 Lafite. The Times’ writer, Robin Goldstein, cites Günter Schamel, an Italian professor of (I think) economics, who wrote a paper called “Forensic Economics: Some Evidence for New Wine to be sold in Old Bottles.” (The paper was presented to the American Association of Wine Economists.)

Schamel wrote: “Online auctions [such as eBay]…may also facilitate the exchange of goods that subsequently can be used in fraudulent transactions.” He studied wine bottle sales on eBay for 6 months and concluded that “the incidence of sale and the price of an empty bottle” are based mostly on “the price a full and presumably authentic bottle could potentially fetch in the marketplace.” In other words, the more expensive the original, filled wine bottle would sell for, the higher the price, and the faster the empty one will sell on eBay. Which led Schamel to suspect that the reason someone would be willing to pay 100 Euros for an empty bottle of ‘82 Lafite is because “it is worth a lot more once it is filled-up again.” [Schamel’s abstract is available as a PDF link in Goldstein’s article.]

Filled up with what? This is where Goldstein carries the speculation a bit further. He argues, convincingly, that two conditions, both of which are easily fulfilled, could result in a thriving market for counterfeit wines. Having obtained an impressive empty bottle, you would need, first, “a separate black market for counterfeit corks” (which common sense suggests must exist, or be easily developed), and “regions where there’s a lot of demand for prestige bottles but relatively little wine tradition or wine education; China and Russia come to mind.” It might (or might not) be possible for discerning wine collectors in London or New York to determine that an ‘82 “Lafite” is nothing of the kind, but what about that “table full of businessmen in Hong Kong” whom Goldstein saw mixing their 1970 Haut-Brion with Coca Cola? “[C]ustomers in such situations would be easily duped,” and the restaurateur who sold them their wine might be less than scrupulous, if in fact he knew the wine was fake.

Needless to say, the possibility of widespread fraud, especially in this Age of the Internet when crooks around the world are perfecting their scams, has not gone unnoticed by the legitimate wine industry. In fact, just a few days ago a team of scientists, led by a researcher from the University of Burgogne, in Dijon, announced a new system “to help fight trade in fake vintage wines,” according to Decanter, which reported the story. The technique uses a mass spectrometer to analyze the thousands of compounds in wine and determine precisely where it came from.

I don’t think the world of collectible wine will ever be free from counterfeiting. For that to happen, the entire notion of “collectible” would have to go away, and that won’t happen; as we’re seeing, with the rise of wealth in developing nations, just the opposite is occurring. A new class of millionaires is vying to own that special bottle they then can mix with Coca Cola.

I guess you get what you pay for.

Wines & Vines Magazine (which is edited by my former boss at Wine Spectator, Jim Gordon, who in turn used to blog for Wine Enthusiast’s unreserved — it’s a small world out there!) has an interesting new article, Pros to Teach Tasting Room Management, explaining how Sonoma State University’s Wine Business Program is teaching a new class for tasting room staff. It will bestow on them what I believe is the nation’s first Tasting Room Management (TRM) Certificate.

Now, I’ve never been big on these certification programs. There’s too many of them. Whether it’s a mail-order divinity license that lets you marry people, or some fancy-pants piece of paper you get from taking a two-week course in wine appreciation, they make it too easy for somebody to become an instant expert. It’s like when the Wizard of Oz gave the Scarecrow a diploma, proving that he had a brain. But Sonoma State’s certification program is one I fully support, for the simple reason that tasting rooms — which have become vital customer centers for wineries — all too often have abysmal staffs. My biggest gripe is when a tasting room person can’t answer a simple question about the wine, such as where the grapes are from.

I do have one apprehension about the Sonoma State course: I hope they’ll let the tasting room employees be themselves and remain warm, friendly human beings, instead of over-educating them to become little marketing managers who see walk-ins as nothing more than dollars on legs.

As part of the Sonoma State program, Jean Arnold, president of Hanzell, will teach a course on “Marketing Wine as a Luxury Product,” which Hanzell certainly is. I’m of two minds on the wine-as-luxury thing. Part of me hates the elitism and snobbery that can accompany it. The other part of me totally relates to it. (So I’m vinously bipolar.) Sit me down to dinner and serve me up ‘61 Latour and I’m impressed! A course on “wine as luxury” flirts with the danger that it reinforces the notion you have to be rich and wearing black tie to enjoy wine, but Jean Arnold is the perfect person to teach it. She’s solid and down-to-earth, as has been everyone I’ve ever met who worked at Hanzell.

Incidentally, a Master of Wine by the name of Sheri Sauter Morano, who’s a spokesperson for the Wines of France campaign, is running a poll on her blog called “Which Wine Will You Open on Election Night?” Speaking for myself, next Tuesday I’ll have a bottle of Roederer Estate 2002 L’Ermitage in the fridge. Here’s what I hope and expect will happen. Shortly after the polls close in California, the national news outlets will declare Barack Obama the winner by a considerable margin. (I’m predicting a minimum of 340 electoral votes.) That’s when I’ll pop the cork, lift the glass high, and shout out L’Chaim! to toast President-elect Obama.

Please vote tomorrow, if you haven’t already. And if you live in California, vote against Prop 8, a vicious, mean-spirited and misguided attempt to deny civil rights to thousands of people. As Bob Dylan wrote, in Slow Train Coming:

But the enemy I see wears a cloak of decency
All non-believers and men stealers talking in the name of religion
And there’s a slow, there’s a slow train coming up around the bend.

I recently came across a new wine book that kind of bothered me.

“Investing in Liquid Assets: Uncorking Profits in Today’s Global Wine Market” is by David Sokolin, the third-generation scion of the well-known New York wine merchant, D. Sokolin Co. As you can tell by the title, the book is on how to invest in so-called “investment grade wine” and make a lot of money.

Sokolin’s basic thesis is that there are certain wines from Bordeaux, Burgundy, Sauternes, the Rhône, Champagne, Italy, Spain, Port, Australia and California that can out-perform the Dow Jones Industrial Average in bringing profit over time. As an example, he cites a man who bought ‘89 Haut-Brion for less than $200 a bottle. In 2007, cases of it sold for $12,000 each.

The book is filled with sub-titles like “Factors that Drive the Price Appreciation of IGW,” “Futures Investment Strategies” and “Back-Vintage Exit Strategy.” At times, it reads more like a primer from Goldman Sachs than a wine book.

It did not surprise me that Sokolin mentioned Wine Spectator on page one of his Introduction (and thereafter mentions it many times). After all, few periodicals have been more instrumental in driving the commoditization of wine as an investment than Wine Spectator. (Disclosure: I used to write about wine collecting and investing for Wine Spectator.)

Nor did it startle me that the blurbs of praise on the back cover were written by the chairman emeritus of Citigroup (which has been hemorraging cash in the wake of the banking crisis) and the president of The Blackstone Group, a hedge fund manager.

I had to wonder why the book left such a sour taste in my mouth. There are several reasons, I think — although I admit to having mixed emotions.

To start, the notion of “investment grade wines” turns me off. Although I’m an investor myself — not in wine, but in stocks and other things — there’s something about treating wine as a vehicle for profit rather than drinking that rubs me the wrong way. To call a collection of wine a “portfolio,” as Sokolin does, makes my head spin.

When wine becomes “an investment opportunity,” it’s completely contrary to how I think of wine, which is as something wonderful to drink with friends and family, to talk about, exult in, study, philosophise about and celebrate for its own sake.

Don’t get me wrong: I don’t mind that there’s a lot of expensive wine that only rich people can afford. It’s been that way since Day One (Julius Caesar was a famous wine snob, and think of all those Popes and Dukes who practically invented Bordeaux and Burgundy). Wealth, and the investment it makes in wine, always has pushed quality forward.

Nor am I disagreeing that investing in certain wines can bring profit. That’s indisputable.

No, it’s the venal attitude toward wine on the part of some investors, exposed by this book, that upsets me. To me, the book has the feel of those TV infomercials that purport to tell how you can become an instant millionaire by beating the market. This whole approach to wine as a rich man’s and woman’s game feeds into the snobbery, elitism and crass opportunism that efface the wine industry, or at least certain aspects of it.

Sokolin says, quote: “There are those who miss the old days of wine, when investors weren’t part of the market…Some feel that [they have] turned wine buyers into lemmings, all chasing after the latest high-scoring bottles, in the process driving the price of great wines well beyond the pocketbook of all but the richest patrons…I don’t see that from my perch.”

Well, that’s exactly what I see from my perch. What I don’t see is how anyone could miss it from theirs.

There are people out there who will say, “Heimoff is just jealous that Wine Enthusiast doesn’t have Wine Spectator’s clout.” I don’t think that’s true. Wine Enthusiast and I choose not to take the elitist approach to wine.

How do you feel? Is Sokolin’s book, and the attitudes it reflects, offensive? Is the book simply a straightforward acknowledgement of reality? Good investment advice? Am I being overly-sensitive? I’d love to hear your feedback.