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"No thanks. I'll take the Cash." |
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photo ©2002 Jeffrey Luke |
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I have never really liked the taste of wine, so I should say from the start that I rarely have a glass. Warren Buffett was once offered a glass of high-priced wine at a dinner party. Holding his hand over the glass he replied: "No thanks. I'll take the cash." A man does not become the world's most successful investor by ignoring costs, and with the exception of his private jet, "The Indefensible," the material trappings of Warren's life are quite modest. He lives in the same grey succo house he bought four decades ago for $31,500. His daughter Susie said, "He doesn't spend anything. He'll drive his car and wear his clothes until they fall apart." Talking about wine, Warren said, "Maybe grapes from a little eight-acre vineyard in France are really the best in the world, but I always had a suspicion that about 99 percent of it is in the telling and about 1 percent of it is in the drinking." With that said, the bottle of Villa Puccini pictured above is made in Leonardo da Vinci's homeland, the Tuscan region of Italy. A wine broker once told me that she loves this wine because it's such an overachiever (did she mean this in the same sense as a precocious 4th grader?), especially when compared to pricey "super Tuscans" (the term refers to wine made from a mix of traditional Sangiovese, Merlot and Cabernet grapes). I don't agree with her assesment. Far from an overachiever, this wine brought to mind a tempestuous madamoiselle who whispers sweet nothings in your ear one moment, then slaps you across the face the next. No matter what fermented grapes bring to mind, for $10 you can bring a bottle of this Tuscan wine to your dinner table. At that price, Warren shouldn't have too many complaints; one bottle costs less than his favorite meal: a rare T-bone steak with a double order of hash browns, washed down with a cherry Coke at Gorat's steakhouse in Omaha. |
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