Building Your Own Wine Collection

Key Takeaways

1. What should a wine collection be built around?
2. Why buy wines with aging potential?
3. Why do lesser-known European regions offer better value?
4. What makes the Southern Rhône a good starting point?
5. Why does Soave deserve more attention?
6. What is Chile doing right for budget collectors?
7. Frequently asked questions

What Should a Wine Collection Be Built Around?

“I believe a collection should represent the collector’s tastes,” says Joe Buckel. “Who wants a bunch of wine they don’t like, even if it is name worthy.”

It’s a more radical statement than it sounds. Wine collecting has a long tradition of prestige-chasing — assembling celebrated appellations, sought-after producers, high-scoring vintages — independent of whether the collector actually enjoys what’s in the bottles. Buckel’s approach inverts that. Start with what you love. Build from there.

The practical implication: before spending serious money on a cellar, spend time tasting. Explore as many different regions and varietals as you can access — wine bars, tastings, bottles with dinner that aren’t your usual choice, cases split with friends. The goal isn’t to develop expertise for its own sake. It’s to find out what moves you. Because once you know what you love, buying becomes considerably easier than it is when you’re deferring to someone else’s opinion about what’s worth owning.

Why Buy Wines with Aging Potential?

Buckel recommends prioritizing wines built to age, and his reason is practical rather than philosophical. “I also highly recommend buying wines that have the ability to age,” he says, explaining that he likes to taste a wine many times over the course of its life. “If made correctly, there should be a beautiful evolution of the wine that will broaden the perspective of the taster.”

That evolution is the real argument for a cellar rather than a wine rack. Most wine consumed today is drunk young — released at its fruit-forward peak and intended to be opened within a year or two of purchase. There’s nothing wrong with that, but it doesn’t teach you what wine can do when given time. A bottle of Southern Rhône Grenache blend at three years old is generous and approachable. The same wine at ten years has shed its primary fruit and replaced it with leather, dried herbs, iron, and earth — an entirely different flavor experience from the same liquid.

Buying wines with aging potential also teaches patience — and teaches you to read a wine at different stages of development. Opening the same bottle at two, five, and ten years is one of the best wine educations available. A cellar built around wines that change and grow rewards the collector in ways that a rack of bottles optimized for immediate enjoyment simply cannot.

Why Do Lesser-Known European Regions Offer Better Value for Collectors?

Buckel came to his European preferences the long way — through three decades of exposure to private cellars in his professional life, alongside his own small personal collection. The pattern he observed is one wine merchants have known for years: the wines that outperform their price tend to cluster in regions that haven’t yet achieved the name recognition that drives price inflation.

Burgundy and Napa are magnificent. They are also priced to reflect the fact that everyone knows they’re magnificent. A lesser-known appellation producing wines of comparable quality at a fraction of the price offers the collector something neither prestige nor restraint can replicate: genuine discovery. When you find a Southern Rhône GSM blend at $18 that drinks like something twice its price, you haven’t just found a bargain — you’ve learned something about what great wine doesn’t need in order to be great.

The principle extends beyond France and Italy. Any region where name recognition hasn’t caught up with quality is a collector’s opportunity. Right now that includes parts of Spain’s Priorat neighbors, Portugal’s Alentejo, Slovenia’s Brda Valley, and much of South America. The list changes as palates and markets shift, but the logic doesn’t: look where fewer people are looking.

What Makes the Southern Rhône a Good Starting Point for a Budget Cellar?

“France’s southern Rhone has a plentiful array of Syrah, Grenache, and Mourvedre,” Buckel says. “All have the ability to age well and create wines with opulent fruit and diverse complexity.”

The Southern Rhône — stretching from the Gard through the Vaucluse, anchored by the famous Châteauneuf-du-Pape but extending into less celebrated appellations like Gigondas, Vacqueyras, Rasteau, and the catch-all Côtes du Rhône — is one of the most reliable value corridors in French wine. The dominant grape varieties (Grenache, Syrah, and Mourvèdre, typically blended in combinations abbreviated as GSM) are naturally suited to the region’s hot days, cool evenings, and limestone-heavy soils. The best examples age beautifully, developing the garrigue (wild herbs, lavender, thyme) and iron-mineral complexity that defines the style.

The practical case for the Côtes du Rhône Villages tier specifically: it requires that grapes come from named villages with stricter yield limits than the basic Côtes du Rhône appellation, producing more concentrated and complex wines at prices that rarely push above $25. Wines from named villages — Sablet, Séguret, Massif d’Uchaux — represent some of the most honest value in French wine and age reliably for five to eight years.

Why Does Soave Deserve More Attention from Wine Collectors?

Buckel says he has “a huge sweet spot in his heart for the region of Soave.” The white wines from this area are mainly Garganega and Trebbiano di Soave and are “a fantastic value,” he says.

Soave sits in the Veneto, east of Verona, and suffered for decades from a reputation built by mass-produced, watery wines bearing its name. The industrial-scale Soave that flooded export markets in the 1970s and 1980s did considerable damage — but the best producers in the Soave Classico subzone, working the original volcanic hillside vineyards, never stopped making wines worth taking seriously. Pieropan, Inama, and Gini, among others, produce Soave Classico that ages unexpectedly well for a white wine, developing a honeyed, almond-and-citrus complexity over five to eight years that can surprise even seasoned collectors.

The key is buying Soave Classico rather than basic Soave DOC, and preferably from the hillside zone rather than the expanded flatland areas added in the 1960s. A well-made Soave Classico from a serious producer — often available for $15 to $25 — can outlast and outperform white wines from far more celebrated appellations at twice the price.

What Is Chile Doing Right for Budget Wine Collectors?

“Chile is doing great things with the Carignan grape, along with a slew of other more popular varietals,” Buckel says.

Chilean wine has undergone a significant identity shift over the past two decades. The country built its export reputation on large-volume, varietal-labeled Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot — reliable, affordable, and largely interchangeable. What’s happening now, and what Buckel was early to notice, is a movement toward older-vine Carignan in the Maule Valley and Itata, two southern appellations with dry-farmed, centenarian bush vines that were nearly abandoned in favor of more fashionable varieties. Producers like De Martino, Garage Wine Co., and Clos des Fous have turned these old vines into wines of surprising depth and structure — earthy, spicy, food-friendly reds with firm acidity and genuine personality.

Beyond Carignan, Chile continues to offer collectors exceptional value in Cabernet Sauvignon (particularly from Maipo and Colchagua at the mid-tier level), Syrah from Elqui and Limarí in the north, and the uniquely Chilean Carmenère — a grape thought extinct in its native Bordeaux that survived in Chilean vineyards, producing wines with a distinctive green herb and dark fruit character that has no real equivalent anywhere else.

Frequently Asked Questions About Building a Wine Collection

🍷 Wine Collection Building — Quick Reference

Joe Buckel’s recommendations and the principles behind them