Howard Helfant is a successful business consultant and sometime venture capital investor based in Miami, Florida. He is a 1980 graduate of Columbia University, where he received a Bachelor’s degree in marketing. He has been an independent consultant since 2011.
He collects wine as a hobby, although he says he doesn’t care
for that word. “To me, ‘hobby’ implies something trivial,” he says. “I take
this pretty seriously.” Some of the wine he buys is not intended for
consumption; rather, he lets these wines appreciate in value, and then sells it
at a profit. One prime example of this is a 1982 Lafite-Rothchild he bought for
$41.00 back in 1982. “I didn’t know much of anything then, but my then-fiancée
said it was a golden opportunity. She was right.” He sold that single bottle
for $5,000 in 2012, a price increase of more than 12,000%.
“That was definitely the exception,” he says. “Most of the wine
I buy, I expect to drink, sooner or later.” He says he usually shies away from
what he calls “trophy” wines, because they tend to be over-hyped. “You can
usually find equally magnificent wine for a lot less money. That’s always been
my watchword: just buy those wines that you’ve actually tasted, and actually
like.”
The fun in collecting wine, Howard Helfant goes on, is not so
much in the purchasing, but in everything that leads up to it. “So, do the
research. Ask the questions. Do the tasting. Then, when you finally get around
to pouring a glass, you’ll enjoy it that much more.”
Read more about Howard Helfant at here: http://howardhelfant.brandyourself.com/
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