Hank Bernbaum has a disease. It’s not communicable, so he can socialize with family and friends. It’s not disfiguring, except for a bluish-red stain it may leave on the teeth. Best of all it can be cured, if the victim wills himself to moderation. At 49, Bernbaum is a compulsive wine collector and has been since the mid-1980s.
The progression is well understood. Thirst is alleviated by a glass of something chilled and white. It tastes good. With a companion, you order a bottle at a restaurant and note the name and vintage on the label. Later, you buy a bottle of this wine so you can repeat the experience at home.
Soon someone tells you the price per bottle is less if you buy wine by the 12-bottle case. You discover there are ordinary, good and great wines from many nations that sell at a wide range of prices. You taste with friends or within a wine club. You buy to learn, you buy for pleasure and soon you begin to buy for status, seeking elite and small-production wines that have received top ratings from wine publications. You discover wine auctions and prices that may exceed $1,000 a bottle. Eventually (often very soon), you find yourself with more wine than you are likely to drink in your lifetime.
There are pleasures to collecting, of course. Not the least of them is the ability to drink and share with friends vintage vinous treasures that are not available in wine shops or restaurants and have aged to full maturity. In a high-yield economy with the newly rich seeking symbols of class at any price, collecting also has become a highly competitive sport.
Bernbaum, owner of an outdoor apparel manufacturing company whose pleasant, outgoing personality masks a deeply competitive nature, has followed this path step by step. Installed in a home purchased this year with his wife, Ann, their four children and 3,000 bottles of wine, he finds himself at a crossroads. He wants to redesign a wine storage area that came with the house. Ann wants him to stop what he acknowledges is a “somewhat wacky” passion.
It all began quite innocently.
Young Hank was allowed to sample wine on occasion at the family dinner table in Winnetka, so reaching drinking age was “no big deal.” His first liquid passion, however, was single-malt Scotch, not wine. He educated himself through comparative tastings and thoroughly enjoyed the process. But of fine wine, he says, “I didn’t know a damned thing.” He bought wine, a few bottles at a time, for immediate consumption, the way many people buy beer.
Then a friend, recently attracted to wine and eager to build a collection, took him to an auction and purchased several cases of Bordeaux’s best. “I thought he was a lunatic,” Bernbaum recalls. Still, our novice came away with two cases from the lavishly praised 1982 vintage. (Fifteen years later, he still has several bottles of that original purchase, Chateau Lascombes ’82 and Chateau Ducru Beaucaillou ’83.)
“As I began tasting, I realized I really liked full-bodied reds. First I keyed in on petite syrah. Then I tried several St. Emilions from a wine list and realized how great the diversity could be within a region. I also discovered I had extravagant tastes without the money to support them.”
At the time, he had a full-blown “fetish” about sailboat racing that led to victories in three Mackinac races and expenditures of considerable time and money. “It was a passion that overwhelmed the rest of my life,” he says. “Eventually I had to remove myself, take a deep breath and get it in perspective.”
But his newfound passion for wine grew unabated. He began to read “from cover to cover” The Wine Spectator, a lifestyle-oriented wine publication whose ratings have wide impact. He followed the magazine’s recommendations but continued to buy to please his palate.
“At first my purchases were sporadic,” he recalls. “The more I read, the more I knew and the more I wanted to taste. Also, I realized it was going to cost more time and money if I didn’t grab the great wines early.”
Fine red wines are allowed to age for two, three or more years before being sold to the public. As demand spiraled during the 1970s and ’80s, merchants and their eager customers began to buy the new wines before they were released. The “futures” market helped the producers’ cash flow and gave wine critics, who had access to each vintage only a few months after the wine was made, unprecedented power. Buying wine hadn’t reached the intensity of trading at the Mercantile Exchange, but managing to buy two cases of Chateau Petrus or Napa Valley’s Dunn or Kistler was an achievement worth celebrating.
Bernbaum loved it. By the early ’90s, the Napa Valley was home to a dozen or more wineries whose owners were not afraid to ask as much money for their wines as did the top producers in France. To become “dialed in,” Bernbaum joined a wine club associated with a retail wine shop. In collaboration with a friend who knows the vineyards of France firsthand, he bought nine cases from a futures offering of 1990 Bordeaux. (Although these wines are now a decade old, he has allowed himself to taste only a single bottle of each. This reluctance to pull the cork is a major reason that collectors often can be found wandering around wine shops looking for a wine to buy for dinner.)
Bernbaum also discovered that some friends had built wine cellars and were filling them with cases from Pahlmeyer, Dalla Valle, Peter Michael-small California wineries of which he’d never heard. His competitive juices began to flow. “I made notes,” he explains, “made a list of wines and researched their availability.” Writing off the Bordeaux first growths and their Napa equivalents, he turned to three areas whose wines pleased him: Italy, the Rhone Valley and Australia.
He also felt the need to take better care of his investment and improve his wine storage in Chicago. He bought a free-standing “wine valet,” essentially an oak-covered refrigerator with temperature and humidity controls. “I think it held 350 bottles, but before I knew it, it was full. So I bought another.”
About four years ago, he rearranged the storage space and added storage racks. Shelves and some machinery-an air conditioner and humidifier-are all that is necessary to turn a storage room into a home wine cellar. A space free of direct light and vibration with a constant temperature will do if wine is to be kept no longer than a year or two. Capacity in Bernbaum’s room grew to about 2,000 bottles.
“All that did,” he recounts, “was convince me that I’ve got to fill this room, and I started buying like crazy. At one festival, I spent 10 grand.” At a wine banquet he found himself seated next to Robert Parker, editor and publisher of The Wine Advocate and considered the world’s most influential critic. Heady stuff.
Meanwhile, temptation intensified as soon as he tasted his first great Burgundy, a 1985 Echezeaux from the fabled Domaine de la Romane e-Conti. “It was so seductive,” he says. “I was floored.” He began to learn about wines made from the pinot noir grape in Burgundy as well as California and Oregon. “I’ve got some catching up to do, I told myself, and began writing checks left and right.”
He had steered clear of zinfandel after an unpleasant experience, but a merchant persuaded him to try another brand. Bernbaum opened the bottle, tasted the contents and found himself with a new area to explore. So he bought more books and magazines and a Palm Pilot with a program of wine and vintage ratings. “I still can’t believe how much knowledge is needed to deal with all the varietals and blends,” he says.
As he talks, he shows a guest the bar area that came with the home he has purchased. It contains a temperature-controlled wine storage unit, a wet bar, glass storage and racks lining the walls filled with bottles. The labels-Mondavi Reserve, Rubesco and Hermitage, among others-testify to Bernbaum’s wide-ranging taste. “I’d like more case storage space,” he says, “and a tasting table.
“My wife has some other renovations in mind. She says, ‘Stop,’ and common sense tells me I could stop, knowing I have enough wine to fill my needs for the rest of my life. I also feel there’s real pleasure in being frugal, in finding something that tastes great for a moderate price. But it’s hard to find a great wine for $15 anymore.”
Furthermore, there’s always another celebrity auction to attend, a heralded vintage to stock up on, a hot new winery offering privileged customers a few bottles by direct mail.
“You try to control your passion for collecting,” Bernbaum concludes, “but it’s easy to lose the battle.”
RECOMMENDATIONS
Hank Bernbaum suggests several favorite California wines from the 1996 and 1997 vintages. Prices are approximate. The 1997 editions of the ’96 wines are very well regarded, but some are not yet available for holiday shoppers.
– Luxury choices
1996 Chimney Rock Cabernet Sauvignon Reserve ($80)
1997 Dominus Estate ($98)
1996 Staglin Family Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon ($50)
– Moderate choices
1996 J. Lohr Hilltop Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon Reserve ($25)
1997 Martin Ray Cabernet Sauvignon Saratoga Cuvee ($27)
– Bargain choices
1997 Alexander Valley Vineyards Cabernet Sauvignon ($16)
1997 Niebaum-Coppola Claret ($14)
