My father would also warn you that your teenage children may break into your wine cellar to take a taste of nearly every rare bottle (judging each one uniquely disgusting). This alone can cost you tens of thousands of dollars.
There is another problem with wine and that is that, contrary to popular belief, you cannot just hold wine in your cellar for as long as you want and have it appreciate in value.
Wines usually have a good or perfect age beyond which their quality goes down. It is different for each wine, and it is complicated wine connoisseur stuff. So your old wines may reach a point where you have to either drink them or sell them ASAP or they will start deteriorating. So you may be forced to sell in a bad market. As such wine is even worse than art (which is another fun but dodgy investment).
Second comment: "I imagine the wine market did very well in the last 13 years as compared to the Russell 3000, but so did practically ever single other asset class, such as Hannah Montana concert tickets, iPhone fart application futures, and wood already on fire."
By the way, Felix Salmon is a remarkably good writer to whom you should subscribe. I don't think he gets enough attention relative to how well he writes.
