He said his daughter initially thought she was detained for buying wine.
When she was first arrested earlier this year, Saberi told her father she had been caught buying wine, illegal in Islamic Iran.
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More importantly, starting a cellar is by far the most cost-effective way of buying wine, as purchasing by the dozen automatically qualifies for a discount.
Flush with success from buying wine from prestigious (but unnamed) vineyards and wineries in California and reselling them under his name, Mr. Hughes has recently moved into Europe.
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His views are supported by fellow U.K. supermarket chain Morrisons, whose 2, 000-strong survey of British wine drinkers found that, when it comes to buying wine, 74% said they weren't confident.
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Then there is the food itself and the art of buying wine to serve with a variety of dishes from turkey, goose and ham to cold meats, sausages and fish.
In a quixotic holdover from Prohibition, when alcohol was banned in the U.S., American consumers have been largely forbidden from buying wine directly from a winery not located in their state.
"Buying wine to these people is like going out and buying a CD or a book or a pair of jeans, " says Benjamin Dollard, president of Pacific Wine Partners, a unit of Constellation Wines.
Buying wine for the holiday season can be fiendishly complicated, as one has to balance the pressures of serving wine on its own or for a drinks party, or merely having something in the fridge when the neighbors pop round for a drink.
Moreover, buying fine wine when it is first released and requires a few years aging is almost always cheaper.
"I buy very little at auctions today because I'm tired of buying fake wine, " said Koch, the brother of industrialists and conservative political supporters David and Charles Koch.
The Australians have been aggressively buying up American wine firms, largely to improve their access to the all-important distribution networks for American supermarkets.
The good news is that in today's fiercely competitive wine market, with savvy buyers, improved winemaking techniques and considerable capital investment, buying a bad bottle of wine is surprisingly difficult.
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Pure and simple, points scoring help relieve buying anxiety in the wine aisle.
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"She told her family that she was initially held for buying a bottle of wine, " CPJ said on its Web site.
Wine drinkers are also buying more expensive drinks in the run up to the Millennium, Majestic Wine said.
It adorns the 20 cases of wine they are buying at a 33% growers' discount from Clos LaChance.
For the wine drinker, buying a contract is simply a way to lock in a price (gambling it won't get cheaper with time).
Increasingly wealthy Chinese consumers are buying everything from designer handbags and valuable wine to flat-screen televisions and cars.
But he said he was not sure the increased interest in English wine was down to concern about buying locally.
So what's a chip-eating, job-taking, house-shopping, wine-drinking, speaker-buying person to do?
Young people are buying it instead of beer, and occasional drinkers can afford wine more often.
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"It's customary to drink red wine at Passover, " he explained when people are most likely to be buying kosher wines.
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Shares in Allied Domecq jumped on reports that Warren Buffett , through his Berkshire Hathaway investment vehicle, is spending some of its cash pile buying a stake of over 3% in the British firm, the world's second-largest wine and spirits group, which also owns the Dunkin' Donuts and Baskin-Robbins food chains.
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