In an otherwise banal (for a billionaire) collection two lots stand out: 1) Two-ounce bottles of vodka plundered from hotel minibars; 2) “One of the odder lots is a crystal decanter filled with a mysterious brown liquid.&# [ Bloomberg ]. SIPPED: plunder. Bernie Madoff’s wines will be auctioned this week. A: only 15%. SIPPED: TLC. MORE >>

His columns were compiled in two books, Bacchus & Me ( amazon , aff) and The Hedonist in the Cellar ( amazon , aff). By contrast, McInerney, whose punchy column ended before the recession took hold, frequently wrote about fine and collectible wines. So here’s one wine writer who was able to find a job again! MORE >>

In October, González Byass released a collection of wines that offers a fascinating, behind-the-scenes glimpse of the way that fino evolves in barrel. The term palma is used by cellarmasters in their classification of the various casks in the cellar. In fact, perhaps the thing that he is worst at in the world is self-promotion. MORE >>

For a Champagne house of such stature, it was a bit startling to see how little wine there is in the cellar. All of the Salon wine from the 1999, 2002, and 2004 vintages - all that there is for the whole world, is in this cellar (that looked kind of like a garage). Calm, cool, collected. And they don't make it very often. MORE >>

This apparent wine lover’s idyll was not always this way: only in the past few years have the owners built up the wine program, in part by purchasing the cellars of now-defunct restaurants. Further, the wine director “prowls through a network of collectors and winery owners, seeking mature older vintages to add to the list.&#. MORE >>