Some thoughts that I have been juggling around in my brain.
Open that bottle! We are discussing this elsewhere (see Jenise's Lafite thread), but it's something that has been gnawing at me since my dad passed away in February. As I was going through his cellar I was regularly coming across bottles of wine that should have been consumed year (sometimes even decades) ago. The tales from the crypt were unfortunate, but necessary to clean things up. Then there were the finds that left me thinking WTF??? There was a solid OWC 6-pack of 1998 Penfolds Bin 707 Cabernet Sauvignon. My dad loved that wine, but he never drank a single bottle of the 1998. I wish I could ask him why. I had one last week, and it was delicious and incredibly classy. There's nothing over-the-top about it. There were 3 separate 6-packs of a California Cabernet (Pott), along with 3 bottles each of two other vintages. 24 bottles of the same wine across 5 vintages, and he never tried a single one. So many unopened 6-packs of Chateau Montelena, or 6-packs with only one bottle gone. My jaw hit the floor so many times that I am still sore.
Fast forward to last week, and I was ready to open a bottle of one of the wines I had brought home from his cellar, and I stopped and thought "but there's only 2 bottles..." I practically slapped myself once I realized what I was doing. I actually did not end up opening it, but grabbed something else equally "special." I need to break that mental cycle. I suspect I am not the only one.
I have a lot of relatively inexpensive (e.g., under $30) wines, and I love a delicious bargain, but there's no reason to hold onto any wine for any reason that to let it get to a good place of maturity. I also have enough wine (did I really just type that phrase?) to last a very long time, even if I drink stuff up at a "carpe corkscrew" rate.