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Richard, can you explain to me why you are doing this? The only number about my cellar which occasionally interests me is its potential market value in case my wife and I should be stuck down by health problems which permanently forbid wine consumption.

As for vintage I am more concerned about its character than by any numerical rating. I often love wines from "off" vintages, e.g. Léoville-Lascases 1993, and many clarets from unfashionable early maturing years like 1999 and 2012. In earlier decades "off" vintages were much more frequent than nowadays but even then there were delicious wines to be found, e.g. a gift to my father of a dozen Mission-Haut-Brion 51 or 56 (I forget which but both were dismissed by critics as disasters).

[David M. Bueker]

My collection is too eclectic to do anything holistic. And other than California wines, where I do a lot of exploring of new things, I mostly buy things I have a long track record with, so I know it’s wine I will like. That’s pretty much all that matters for me these days.

To Tim York: I understand that very few members are likely to do something similar, but the great bulk of our "collection" is left bank red Bordeaux and I want to have some idea of the average quality. Presumably that would have some relation to its value, though we intend to leave any "residue " to family and friends. If they want to sell some that is up to them, but now we are keeping wines a bit warmer than we did previously the value has almost certainly gone down a bit. I have noticed no ill effects so far. Richard L

As I have noted in a more recent post to Jenise (under the heading WTN: Bob's Birthday Wines) I have more or less decided not to include the quality of the year when assessing the quality of my wines. There is still some use in finding the vintage ratings. Richard L