Richard Hales, the wine director at New York City’s Mandarin Oriental Hotel, has been buying and tasting wine professionally for the last five years (prior to that he’d been a chef at several top Manhattan restaurants for several years). Here are his top tips for putting together your own collection:

1. Know your priorities—either drinking or collecting for investment—and create a plan, which should include a budget, a buying strategy, storage requirements, refrigeration needs, and overall goals.

2. Buying for investment requires plenty of homework to identify the best vintages from the top producers. The hottest wines on the auction market today are still Bordeaux, Burgundy, and those from California. Lesser-known wines may make for great drinking but will likely be difficult to resell at auction.

3. Be humble: Ask for advice from your local wineshop expert or a favorite sommelier. Buying wine is a daunting task and learning is an ongoing process—for all of us.

4. Always ask to taste the wine before committing to a large purchase. Sommeliers never buy a wine without tasting it first.

5. A wine will not always improve with age: A bad wine from a weak vintage at release will still be a bad wine years later.

6. If you’re buying to drink, taste “outside the box.” Classic wines are great, but amazing, affordable wines can be found all over the world. Good places to look now include Argentina, Chile, South Africa, the Loire Valley, Bulgaria, and Slovenia.

7. Sample the same grape from various regions, vintages, and price points to determine grape qualities.

8. Try the same producer or region from various vintages to determine vintage variations and aging abilities.

9. Great wines go fast, so start buying now.