A Report From Wine Explorer Diego Samper
Paris, France
About a month ago, someone approached me and said,
“Hey Diego, I have this friend—he’s getting old now, and his cellar is full of gems. Romanée-Conti, Rothschilds, Pétrus, ports from the early 1900s… all the good stuff.”
I was intrigued.
A collection like that doesn’t come around often. Probably over a hundred thousand dollars’ worth of wine, the kind of bottles you read about, not taste.
For context, Romanée-Conti is Burgundy’s crown jewel, a single vineyard that produces the world’s most coveted pinot noir. Pétrus is Bordeaux royalty, a tiny estate in Pomerol made almost entirely from merlot, famous for its elegance and its price tag.
And here’s a fun side note: the former winemaker of Pétrus, Jean-Claude Berrouet, brought that same restraint to Argentina. He crafted Las Notas de Jean Claude for Tapiz. Many of you loved this wine when we first featured the 2014 vintage—it sold out fast. We’ve now brought in the 2018, and it’s just as elegant, just as quietly powerful.
We have it in our cellar – Las Notas de Jean Claude 2018 – and while it doesn’t cost what a Pétrus does, it carries the same quiet mastery in every sip.
That whole exchange got me thinking about the difference between a collector and a trophy hunter.
A real collector chases stories. He holds on to bottles because they mean something, because they mark a moment worth remembering. He opens them when the time feels right, and he shares.
A trophy hunter, on the other hand, doesn’t chase discovery. He buys to be seen. He collects receipts, not memories. The rarest wines become like taxidermy, proof of acquisition, not appreciation.
In wine, that impulse shows up as the trophy bottle: the cult Cabernet, the impossible-to-find Burgundy, the label whispered about in collectors’ circles. You don’t drink it to enjoy it; you drink it to say you did.
It’s the wine-world equivalent of the trophy wife, admired, envied, displayed. Beautiful from a distance, but often hollow when you get too close. There’s an arrogance in that, the belief that owning something rare is the same as understanding it.
That’s the danger of the trophy hunter.
He confuses price with worth. Fame with meaning. Applause with joy.
And I get it. The pressure is real.
In a world obsessed with visibility, it takes courage to choose quietly. To drink a wine nobody’s reviewed. To love something without anyone’s permission.
At Bonner Private Wines, we’ve met the quiet kind, the winemaker who could boast but never does. His hands are calloused, his eyes steady. He talks about the weather, the soil, maybe his dog. Not money. Not fame. You taste his wine and feel that calm confidence, the kind that doesn’t need to prove anything.
Those wines can be hard to find, but not because they were made to impress. They’re rare because the people behind them are too busy working to perform.
As for that $100,000 cellar, there was a catch.
It was in Canada.
And moving wine across borders is a bureaucratic labyrinth. Private deals, endless paperwork… crossing arms sounds easier than moving bottles between countries.
But that’s a story for another day.
There’s also a lesson in all this. Storing wine because you might sell it later sounds easy, but it’s not. Bringing wine to market means navigating questions of provenance, authenticity, storage, and trust. Anyone who’s seen the documentary Sour Grapes knows what I mean. I highly recommend watching it.
Truth is, I might have a few bottles tucked away myself, but I’ve always been the type who prefers to drink what’s in front of me. I’d rather open something now than keep it hostage for the sake of convenience.
That’s why all our wines in the club are ready to drink. No waiting. Ceremony, yes—but the real kind, the one that happens when a cork pops and conversation starts.
There’s an old saying in wine: it’s better to drink a bottle a year too early than a year too late.
So go ahead. Open that bottle.
And if you have a Canadian friend interested in that kind of deal, let me know here: explorers@
Tell me what you’ve been drinking lately too. I’m always curious what bottles are opening on your tables.
The only catch?
He has to invite me to open a few of those bottles.
Cheers,
Diego Samper
Wine Explorer, Bonner Private Wines
P.S. If you already have Las Notas de Jean Claude in your cellar and want to try something I think is truly worth discovering, go for the wines from Raquis. You can find them here
