Fine Wine Lines: Selling a Wine Collection at Auction with Good Bottle

April 23, 2025

Learn more about how to keep and age wine, evaluate a bottle’s condition, and sell wine at auction with Good Bottle Auctions.

To the Collector:

You’re a person of culture and cultivation; that’s why you collect wine. Not just any wine, mind you, but only the finest vintages from the very best years.

Over the years, you’ve built up quite the collection. Your cellar (or basement) has a number of bottles that are too good to drink on just any occasion. Perhaps, your collection has outgrown its space, and it’s time to downsize.

The way we see it, you have two options. You could throw a huge party and drink them all. Watching Great Aunt Margaret chugging Château Lafite Rothschild straight out of the bottle may make your considerable investment worth it, and the photos will certainly make the family photo Christmas card this year. However, while such a shindig would be very fun (and quite tasty), this would leave you having gone through your precious collection.

Your second, smarter option is to sell your precious collection with Good Bottle Auctions. Leave it to us, the professionals, who will see to every detail. From cataloging and pricing to professional photography and careful service, you’ll find that our team at Good Bottle will get you the best return on your significant investment. With your proceeds, you can finally nab that bottle of Petrus that has been taunting you, and you won’t feel too bad about drinking it. This one may be a bit too riche to hand to Aunt Marge, though…

About Wine – a short primer:

It would be overkill to attempt an exhaustive overview of wine here, but here are some general basics. Wine is, essentially, fermented grape juice. There are three general types of wine: red, white, and rosé. Certain grapes make certain types of wine: the red Merlot grape makes a red Merlot wine, the white Chardonnay grape makes a white Chardonnay wine. Rosé is usually made with a red wine grape with limited contact of the grape’s skin with the juice before fermenting. Hence, it comes out pink. Sparkling wine undergoes a secondary fermentation in the bottle, which gives it bubbles.

Types of grapes can be mixed to make blends (a red blend, a white blend), or they can be used to make single-varietal wines, usually called by the name of the grape. Wine can be named after the grapes that make them up (a Cabernet Sauvignon, an Aglianico) or after the region they come from (a Bordeaux or a Chianti).

A wine with a region’s name MUST be made in that region or area to have that name. For instance, Champagne must come from the Champagne area of France. So, a California “champagne” is not technically Champagne, and the winery can even get in trouble for labeling it as such.

The area in which a wine is grown contributes much to its taste. The soil, water, and amount of sun in a given location can affect which types of grapes grow there and what flavors come out in the wine itself. This may sound smug, but it is true. Taste a good Cabernet Sauvignon from California and a good Cabernet Sauvignon from France. They will both taste incredible, but they will taste different.

Tasting notes of wine run the gamut, from tobacco and earth to peaches, pineapples, and strawberries. The best way to taste wine is to hold the glass by the stem, swirl it gently, and sniff to pick out notes “on the nose”. Then take a small sip and make a “tic tic” sound with your tongue against the ridge behind your front teeth. This will aerate the wine and expose more flavors “on the palate”. After you swallow the wine, more flavors may arise in a “finish”. Color is judged by slightly tipping your clear glass so the wine runs up the side a little bit (don’t spill any!), and judging the color against a white napkin.

Finally, and most importantly for this article, not all wine is meant to be aged. Typically, the best wines to age are reds, though some white wines can also be aged, particularly champagne. If it has a dark green bottle, you can probably age it. Some bottles age well for 3 to 5 years after their vintage date (when it was made, printed right on the bottle). Some can stand up to decades of aging, oftentimes really robust reds. Wine is always aging and changing in the bottle. In many ways, wine is alive and must be treated well.

How to Properly Store and Age Wine:

Wine is a truly beautiful thing, and, like anything truly beautiful, it requires proper care and attention. If you treat wine right, it can last for many, many years (and possibly outlive you). If you don’t, you’ll have a bottle of vinegar – safe to drink but not very pleasant!

Wine must be stored in a cool, dark area with a pretty regular temperature. Ideally, this should be a temperature-controlled wine cellar with no windows. However, not all of us are Rockefellers, so a wine cellar might be out of the question.

You could purchase a nice little wine refrigerator or do what most aspiring wine collectors do: even keep your wine in your basement. If you want to go the basement route, there are a few things to keep in mind:

First, make sure the air is neither incredibly damp nor too dry. You want it to be a little damp, just enough to keep your corks from shriveling.

Second, you don’t want it to smell. Strong smells can be incorporated into your wine. No one wants to sip wine and taste notes of paint thinner.

Third, keep your wine in a darker area of your cellar, away from natural light. Natural light is your wine’s worst enemy.

Fourth, make sure the temperature stays pretty constant. The general rule for wines is 55 degrees Fahrenheit.

When storing wine, it is best to store bottles on their sides. This keeps the cork moist and prevents it from breaking. Invest in a wine rack; this will go a long way.

How to tell if Wine is still Good without opening it:

As we have said, wine requires care and attention. If properly cared for, it can last a very long time.

Cork Dork Note: the oldest bottle of wine in existence is the Speyer Bottle. It was found in Speyer, Germany in a sealed glass bottle, and dates to the 4th century A.D., when Speyer was part of the Roman Empire. While it is not strictly stored properly, it would be safe to drink – but not palatable. It was also bottled with oil, honey, and spices within the bottle (a Roman thing), so you can imagine the millennia-old funk in that bottle!

But what if you come across a bottle or a collection of wines and you don’t know how they were cared for? How can you tell if they may still be good?

First, assess the level of the wine in the bottle. Stand it straight up on its base. Assuming the bottle is relatively recent, you should be able to see where the wine comes from. If the wine comes up to and into the neck, that is a good sign. If it is well below the “shoulder” of the bottle (where the bottle curves out into the body), it could be suspect.

Second, hold the bottle up to the light. You can also tilt it to try and get a good read on it. You are looking for a uniform color and a lack of floating solids. Large, floating solids are a bad sign. A little sediment at the bottom is okay (sediment is expected in older vintages).

Finally, look at the cork (if it is visible). If the cork is dry and cracking, that’s a bad sign. If the cork looks relatively normal, that is a good sign.

Other considerations are more cosmetic—a bottle in overall good condition, with an attractive label in good condition, will sell more than the same bottle with a gross label. However, wine collectors are usually more concerned with the “juice” within the bottle than the exterior labeling, though the label condition can show the general care taken in preserving the wine.

It’s important to realize, however, that wine is fickle. You can take excellent care of a bottle, it can appear in perfect condition, and the label can be pristine, and you can open it, and it can be “corked”. Corking, or “cork taint”, comes from possible trace chemicals in the cork or from the equipment used to make the wine. There’s no way to tell if a wine is corked before you open it, and they say corked wine tastes like wet dog, a basement, or like nothing at all. It simply happens sometimes, and there’s nothing to be done. The good news is that there’s nothing else wrong with the wine – it’s perfectly fine to drink. It just doesn’t taste very good.

How to Sell with Good Bottle:

We are very glad that you’ve chosen to sell your collection with Good Bottle! You’ve come to the right place, as we are professional auctioneers and Connecticut’s first licensed auctioneer of wine, whisk(e)y, and collectible spirits. Now, of course, we come to brass tacks: how do I actually sell my wine collection?

The first step is to contact us using either our web contact form or by calling us at 860-378-8808. Then, tell us a little about your collection. For instance, you can tell us how many bottles you have and are interested in selling with us, what they are, and where your collection is located.

After this, we can come up with a plan. One of our professionals can visit you and view your collection. We can tell you more about what you have and give you a general idea of the value of your collection. We also discuss our fair and honest commission structure, to ensure that we both feel good about our business together. We can safely transport your collection to our auction house, where they will be professionally cataloged and photographed and listed for auction in one of our popular online and in-person auctions. During our live auctions, our entire auction staff come together to sell your wine to the highest bidder. If the buyer is further afield, our experienced shipping department will ensure the careful wrapping and transport of the precious cargo. You get paid, and you’re free to use your newfound riches to invest in more bottles of wine.

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Fine Wine Lines: Selling a Wine Collection at Auction with Good Bottle

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