Most of the wines in our collection come from local wineries where we are part of their wine club. Currently those are Scribe, Silverado and Petrichor. But recently discovered a section on K&L Wines that’s been tickling my fancy. And that’s their auctions page.

Now before I continue, I don’t claim to be an expert in buying wines. I still do my research on every bottle I see and it’s a decision that you have to make. This is also not a paid post by K&L Wines, they’re just a big local wine merchant!

Pick what you’ll drink

The world of wine can be lucrative. If you buy at the right time, sometimes a wine futures, you could probably make a bunch of money. It can practically be a stock market. But as the great Warren Buffet once said: “I don’t invest in something I don’t understand.” and I’ve applied that here. I know what types of wines I like. So I go on the auctions page looking for wines that I would like to store or drink, not which wines I can profit off of.

It’s rather easy to narrow down regions on their auctions page. Find a region you’re particularly fond of and browse through what they have to offer. If I find something is within my price range I’ll go on a big Google search on that particular wine. What’s the normal asking price, tasting notes, reviews. I once spent a few hours reading up on one of the wines I placed a bid on. With all that information in mind, it’s good to have a max price. Then you can start bidding.

My research

I don’t proclaim myself a wine expert, I have a working knowledge of some random regions but that’s thanks to past research. If I find a wine that looks interesting and not astronomically priced, I’ll go on the hunt for more information. And by hunting I meant typing the name on Google and start reading.

There are a few sites I seem to find myself on. Predominantly I’ll read Wine Searcher and CellarTracker. These two will give you a mix of pricing based on a few sources, reviews and tasting notes. It will give you a good baseline knowledge of how much you should spend on the wine, and if the reviews or tasting notes seem like something you will drink.

If I have a bit of time on the auction, I will continue diving a bit deeper on a partciular wine. This will usually entail reading up on the history of the producer and the region.

Buy like you normally do

If you’re a serious collector then ignore the next part. But the thing that I’ve kept in mind while looking through the auctions page is that I’m buying like I normally buy. It’s a bit more work because of the unknown pricing, but the important part still remains: I am buying something I want to drink.