How much in the cellar?

Well! I have 3 bottles and I'm going to buy another one tomorrow. Watch out WLDG here I come!!!!!

[Jenise]

Well! I have 3 bottles and I'm going to buy another one tomorrow. Watch out WLDG here I come!!!!!

LOL! You go, girl.

At Casa Redwinger the motto "Don't ask, Don't tell has served my 33 year marriage well.
Curly

Leave it to the newbie to ask a lot of questions. But, I was reading the Wine Bible a couple of days ago and I came across a picture of the author in her wine cellar. There were A LOT of bottles in there, maybe thousands. Anyway, the caption read something like..." I intend on drinking every one of these bottles of wine."

So my questions are:
1. How many bottles do you have?
2. If you have a lot of bottles when can you possibly drink them all if you continue to buy and cellar more wine?

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Ronica, I like your inquisitive nature and believe that's why forums exist; to learn and share! I love collecting and have many interests, so I really have to pace myself. When it comes to wine, I love trying it all and could easily fill our cellar several times over if I didn't show some restraint. My husband and I agreed that we did not want to end up with so many bottles that we found ourselves focused more on our inventory and forgot the sheer joy of just opening a great wine and sharing a glass together! We agreed that we would never cellar more than 100 bottles at any given time, and most of the time, we average closer to 50. The second part of your question is what helped us decide on 100 bottle rule. Both of us decided that we would like to be the ones who enjoy our wine selection. We didn't want to leave it all behind for posterity!

[James Roscoe]

At Casa Redwinger the motto "Don't ask, Don't tell has served my 33 year marriage well.
Curly

I think I am going to send this message on to my wife. At least she will learn that I'm not the only one. (26 years and counting.)

23 years here...but she's on to me.


Dang it.

Just topping 4000 bottles.

I've slowed down purchases in the last couple of years as I can drink mature wines from the cellar without necessarily needing to replace them.

I think I am going to send this message on to my wife. At least she will learn that I'm not the only one. (26 years and counting.)

It will be 26 years of wedded bliss for us this December as well. How nice that so many of you have enjoyed long marriages. You won't find those kind of stats on just any forum; we are members of a very exclusive "club" anymore! Hmm...perhaps those couples that enjoy wine together, stay together? :cool:

[Jenise]

I think I am going to send this message on to my wife. At least she will learn that I'm not the only one. (26 years and counting.)

It will be 26 years of wedded bliss for us this December as well. How nice that so many of you have enjoyed long marriages. You won't find those kind of stats on just any forum; we are members of a very exclusive "club" anymore! Hmm...perhaps those couples that enjoy wine together, stay together? :cool:

20 years here. And Deborah, I think there's something to that--people who enjoy fine wine together probably spend more time talking and connecting, on average, than those who don't. And we probably share more meals with our spouses too, and less time watching TV.

20 years here. And Deborah, I think there's something to that--people who enjoy fine wine together probably spend more time talking and connecting, on average, than those who don't.

Hey, J - back from the upper reaches of the Yang-tse, or posting from your cell phone?

Yes, I find that people that drink wine together usually talk - and if I have mistakenly left a price sticker on a bottle I bring out of the cellar, you may make a good guess about the subject matter of the discussion....

[Jenise]

Yes, I'm back. And not one bottle of Chinese wine in tow.

LOL about price stickers. And useful hint--if we're ever talking about wine prices around Suz, I promise to admit to no more than $6.99 for anything.

Welcome back!

I tried the cunning ploy of telling her what a bottle she was complaining about (probably had a $20 tag on it) was now worth, once, figuring it would make her appreciate what a canny buyer I was. It just made her ask how one goes about selling a bottle of wine......

Carlo, that Allen Vineyards Pinot Noir should be special. Does bbl. stand for barrel?

Ronica:

Nice question! The wines in my passive cellar and their drinking windows roughy correspond with my consumption patterns and what time I might have left on planet Earth. Thus I've got 240 bottles on hand, with some coming on line this year, others good for 25 years, and many many "tweeners." Any new purchases I make would be for current drinking or very short-term aging only.

Inasmuch as this scenario appears cooly rational, I've able to stick with it partly because I've had a significant drop in income this past year! Once I get back into a decent job again, who knows what will happen! (So much good wine and so little time!)

Speaking of time, there's a tongue-in-cheek side benefit to owning a wine cellar intended for medium- and long-term consumption. I've not seen this discussed before. To wit: It's a well-known "fact" that time flies as we get older. A wine cellar can act as a countervailing force to this tendancy in that it actually slows down the passage of time! How so? Well, it seems to me that the drinking windows in the distant future for all of those special bottles of wine never seem to arrive! Thus time is actually being stretched because of a wine cellar! Ha!

Dave Mo

Yes, I find that people that drink wine together usually talk - and if I have mistakenly left a price sticker on a bottle I bring out of the cellar, you may make a good guess about the subject matter of the discussion....

Bill,
Don't be such a cheap skate. Invest in a label machine. I remove all price tags and install one of my three labes, $6 for the everyday stuff, $10 for the good stuff, and $12.50 for the aged Bordeaux and Burgs.
Walt

What great thought provokers in the above responses. The "time flies antidote" is certainly true -says this old guy. And the label machine is a stroke of pure genius.

And the label machine is a stroke of pure genius.

I'm thinking that the idea of the label machine may be the best thing I ever got from this forum. Unfortunately, hubby is starting to figure out that I'm unlikely to drink much pinot/Burgundy that's less than $20.

And the label machine is a stroke of pure genius.

I'm thinking that the idea of the label machine may be the best thing I ever got from this forum. Unfortunately, hubby is starting to figure out that I'm unlikely to drink much pinot/Burgundy that's less than $20.

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LOL! Good one, Laura! I warned my husband before he proposed marriage almost 30 years ago that I wasn't a "cheap date" and he still went with it, so I consider it a point of honor to uphold my part of the bargain!

Until last month I could have only guessed at an answer, but at the beginning of August I started using the amazing CellarTracker and now I know exactly how many bottles I have, what is in them and where they are. And I know what I have drunk since joining CT.

So, at this exact moment I have

263 bottles in stock and 12 pending delivery

We drink wine 6 nights a week, so 263 bottles is less than 1 years supply. But I buy wine I fancy whenever there is an umissable sale or offer. And that happens most weeks

You all are so funny! Many good threads going on here:

- the sticker one is of particular interest to me since my hubby thinks that 2 buck chuck is a good deal for wine.

I've been on ebay checking out wine cellars. These things are not cheap! My husband and I are king and queen of finding a good deal. Found a new Danby 35 bottle, never used cooler in the paper for $200. I offtered $100. I'll keep you posted.

I generally have between 150-175 bottles in stock at any particular time these days. This is a considerably larger number than I used to have. But things have changed. First, a divorce some years ago caused me to have to split up the wines I then had... and I ended up seeing several cases of really nice wine leave home. So that got me in the it's time to replace them mood. Secondly, in that past relationship, we seemed to always drink pretty much the same stuff... almost exclusively big California Cabernets. But in my new life I decided to explore the wonderful worlds of what I had been missing. So I brought on the pinot noir, and zin, and malbec and burgundy and Italian wines and whites of all descriptions. Some I liked... some others not so much. But I did find lots of new wines to love. And of course, for every new wine I found I liked. I had to buy some to have around. So the celler has grown. My current plan is to attempt to reach about 200 bottles and then then just replace at about the same rate as I drink (approximately 1/2 bottle a day...usually with dinner). As to storage, I am fortunate to have a room in my house that stays between 65 and 70 degrees all year long.

Glenn

I have about 80 bottles that are sitting in my cellar waiting to be old enough to drink. Mostly Bordeaux, Burgundy, Barolo, and a few Riojas. I have another 80 or so bottles that I just haven't gotten around to or that I'm waiting to match with an appropriate meal and/or occasion. And there are about 25 bottles down there that I just haven't felt like picking up. There's also a fairly constant rotation of "business" wines--one's I'm experimenting with to see how long they have to be open before they reach some sort of peak. We're into the mad scientist thing, where there are always a half-dozen bottles open, all in various stages of oxidation. That's how I figured out that Olivier LeFlaive's 2002 Cuvee Margot needed three hours uncorked--not two, and not four. Also how I discovered that certain nero d'avola bottles develop huge noses of fig on Day Two...

...There's also a fairly constant rotation of "business" wines--one's I'm experimenting with to see how long they have to be open before they reach some sort of peak. We're into the mad scientist thing, where there are always a half-dozen bottles open, all in various stages of oxidation. That's how I figured out that Olivier LeFlaive's 2002 Cuvee Margot needed three hours uncorked--not two, and not four. Also how I discovered that certain nero d'avola bottles develop huge noses of fig on Day Two...

I've never thought to do that kind of experimentation, but it makes a lot of sense. How often do you have a taste test during the process, Dave? BTW, I do not mean to be impertinent at all with this next question because I am still very much a newbie on "wine speak"; I just want to be clear on the terminology. You stated ..."various stages of oxidation." Should that be oxygenation instead? I realize that oxidation is the process occuring when the wine is exposed to air, but aren't you experimenting with the effects of oxygenation on the wine's flavor at different intervals? Are the terms interchangeable? As I said, I'm not trying to split hairs here, I simply want to have a clear understanding of the difference in the two terms. Thank you for your understanding and clarification.

120 Bottles (not counting daily drinkers) with plenty of room for growth in my 500 bottle cellar. This is what I’d like to add, in order of importance.

***Vintage Champagne
More Northern Rhones (Faurie, Barge, Jasmin, Graillot)
95, 98, 99 Chave
More Bartolo Mascarello
More G. Rinaldi
More Good Sherry
More Riojanas
More La Rioja Alta
Ageworthy Gruner
Misc. Chateau-Chalon (thanks, Yixin!)
Dugat
Jayer

My goal is to have a self-sustaining* amount of each of the following by the time I’m 30 (3 years, 1 month): Barolo, Rioja, Burgundy, Rhones, Champagne.

Best,
Joe

* self-sustaining in that I’ll have a big enough base that I can just do maintenance upkeep. For Rioja (since I drink a lot) it might be 75 bottles, for vintage Champagne it might only be 30 bottles...