Not every widowed woman is fortunate enough to be a Laure Flatt or a Betsey Apple, with their deceased husbands leaving them sizable, world-renowned collections of fine vintage wine. These lucky ladies had absolutely no interest in owning these purple money makers except to sell them. If you happen to be such a widow or widower, you might just be in for a huge headache. Most widows and widowers do not know how to sell their grape y inheritance for the value that it should bring in the marketplace. Selling this wine that has been bequeathed to them is rarely as easy as they think due to the various state laws against selling and shipping wine within and between borders and even between countries.
It is, however, worthy to note that unsuspecting wine collection benefactors are still left with options. The first step is to get your wine portfolio appraised. Since a do-it-yourself approach to wine appraisal is improbable at best, and laughable at worst, the best solution is to allow approved wine buyers and wine retailers to appraise the collection for free. When looking for appraisers, look on the internet on such sites as Yahoo and Google. Perform a search for terms such as 'Wine Buyers' or something similar and find a wine buyer that you feel that you trust. Look at the website, view testimonials, and learn about the company.
Keep in mind that it may be completely irrelevant what the value of the appraisal 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 will rarely get the full value of your appraised wine collection if you are selling it in bulk if you are selling to a middleman (such as a wine broker or auction house). Still, an appraisal helps you get a baseline to start from.
Once you have gotten the appraisal, all that's left to do is to sell the wine. While it sounds easy (and it should be easy) our government often makes things way more complicated than they should be. Numerous 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-welcoming states such as Arizona, California, Illinois, New York and a few others. Wine buyers in these states will most likely give you the best deal.
The various tasks to deal with after such an untimely death can be overwhelming. Selling a wine collection doesn't have to be. Do your homework. Follow a process. And work with reputable people. If only all of life were that simple.
