Money was the least of it, at the beginning.

“My passion for wine first started at Princeton,” he recalls. “I drank beer until it bored me. Then, in my junior year I discovered Blue Nun. I served it with caviar and cream cheese on crackers.”

He began haunting Princeton’s wine shops, tasting, learning, buying.

The trip to Europe—Stott sailed over on the famous ocean liner, The France, with his best friend— was an important milestone. (A bottle of Chateau Lafite cost 10 francs, less than breakfast, he recalls.)

A family friend, Olivier LeBas, a French war hero and bon vivant, shepherded them through Burgundy and became another mentor. “Just remember the names of Domaine de la Romanee Conti and de Vogue” was his advice. So Stott started at the top and found the pinot noir grape spoke to him.

“It was the aroma that got me,” he says. “And the wines are not as dry as Bordeaux. Even the Bordeaux I like resemble Burgundies.” (Chateau Petrus is one of them.)

Getting his hands on many of the wines wasn’t easy. “In those days very few Burgundies were available in the U.S.,” he says. “I mostly had to rely on the basic gold standard—wines from negociants Drouhin and Jadot—and collected their grands crus.”

New York sommeliers turned him on to DRC’s Le Montrachet. By the 1980s he was visiting Burgundy regularly, being introduced to growers whose wines he respected, and was often invited to dine in their homes. Winemakers he befriended introduced him to others. Going further afield led him to Anne Gros and others who later became well known.

“That exposure was important,” he says. “What really grabbed me were the people. Burgundy is like peeling an onion. You think you understand on the first layer, then see you really didn’t.” He bought through brokers, feeling it would be inappropriate to ask producers to sell direct to him.

Stott spent so much time in Burgundy that he invested in part ownership of L’Hotel in Beaune, a small, elegant hostelry with a tiny bistro, where he often staged wine dinners. And he would often open bottles in the lounge or courtyard and share them with whoever wandered by. Among his faves are Chambolle Musigny, Romanee St. Vivant, La Tache, and Musigny from Roumier (the 2005 vintage of the last one is now worth about $9,000 a bottle).