Options for a widow with a wine collection

Not every widowed woman is lucky enough to be a Laure Flatt or a Betsey Apple, as their deceased husbands leave them significant collections of world-renowned vintage wines. These lucky ladies had absolutely no interest in owning these purple money generators, except to sell them. If you happen to be a widow or widower, you may be in for quite a headache. Most widows and widowers don’t know how to sell their grapes and inheritance for the value it should generate on the market. Selling this bequeathed wine is rarely as easy as you think due to various state laws against selling and shipping wine within and across borders and even across countries.

However, it’s worth noting that unsuspecting wine collection benefactors still have options. The first step is to evaluate your wine portfolio. Since a do-it-yourself approach to appraising wine is improbable at best and ridiculous at worst, the best solution is to allow approved wine buyers and wine retailers to appraise the collection for free. . When looking for appraisers, search the Internet at sites like Yahoo and Google. Do a search for terms like “Wine Buyers” or something similar and find a wine buyer you feel you trust. Look at the website, view testimonials and learn about the company.

Keep in mind that it may be completely irrelevant what the appraised value of your wine is when it comes to selling your wine. Depending on how much time you want to invest in the process, how quickly you want to sell the wine, and how much legwork you want to do, you’ll rarely get full value from your prized wine collection if you sell it in bulk. if you are selling to a middleman (such as a wine broker or auction house). Still, an assessment helps you get a baseline to start with.

Once the appraisal is obtained, all that remains is to sell the wine. While it sounds easy (and it should be easy), our government often makes things much more complicated than they need to be. Many states have laws that prevent the “unauthorized” sale and distribution of alcoholic beverages, such as wine. If you live in one of those states, you should sell your collection to the more wine-receptive states, such as Arizona, California, Illinois, New York, and a few others. Wine buyers in these states will likely give you the best deal.

The various tasks that must be faced after such an untimely death can be overwhelming. Selling a collection of wines doesn’t have to be. Do your homework. Follow a process. And work with renowned people. I wish all life was that simple.

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