Drinking a little too young in the early years of cellaring - I was too impatient.
I did also go a bit longer than I should have done on Aussie reds, but they were wines with a track record of ageing, so it’s not been much of a bind to run them down slowly over time.
Finally allowing myself to leave 1980s Barolo/Barbaresco as a gaping hole, whilst still picking up 1950s and 1960s wines.
I guess that may be true of some metal racks, but I have VintageView which have no sharp edges and over the course of a year I have not scratched a label. I can’t say that for my old cellar which had wooden racks. It was way too easy to scratch or scuff a label in those racks. The preference for the look of one over the other is purely subjective, but I prefer metal because:
I would rather look at the label as opposed to the punt or capsule;
It is much easier to grab the second or third bottle in a row as opposed to trying to grab the second bottle in a double deep wood rack;
You can actually see what is in the second row and sometimes even the third without having to add bottle tags. True to their name, it is very easy to identify the vintage of the bottles in the second and third rows, even if you can’t read the entire label.
They don’t scratch or scuff the labels like my old wood racks.
My builder asked me if I wanted to dedicate a space under my front porch to a wine cellar and I couldn’t imagine needing it 17 years ago. Bummer because now I have two cabinets, 100 or so btls under the stairs for daily picking and offsite too.
Having an organizational system is also really helpful. I started putting things in boxes, stryo shippers, burying things randomly. Right now I am trying to figure out where I misplaced two bottles of Maybach Materium. (I really hate that)
In a similar vein, just storing stuff in boxes, stuffing the cellar (in my case, my offsite lockers) to the max, has not served me well. I have barcode labels on every box, and (for the most part) my Cellartracker account has info on what’s in each box. But because it’s such a pain in the ass to get to the stuff in the back, it might as well not even be there. At some point here I really need to pony up for a larger locker and put in racks, because even though it’s technically organized, this system is really not working.
Proper and varied storage capacity and rock-solid cooling equipment are all that really matter to me.
All the fancy bells and whistles of under-cabinet lighting, table tops made of discarded barrel staves, Art Nouveau style posters, etc. really aren’t important to someone like me. My modest 10-foot-by-10-foot cellar isn’t much of a showpiece or showroom for me. I don’t spend that much time in it – admiring labels, showing wines to visitors, sampling wines, and what not. But I understand that others may really enjoy building out a bigger walk-in area in which they are proud to entertain guests.
What’s important is having enough space and keeping wines at conditions that fit your lifestyle and expected drinking windows. It’s great to be able to walk into your cellar and easily select from a number of wines that you have carefully selected and cared for over the years.
Buying too many defenders just because they were on sale rather than using the money and space to get mid or higher range bottles to age.
Thinking I need to be on every new list someone brags about on WB or CT. There have definitely been some good ones but a couple I bought multiple releases just to have the hot wine that I didn’t care for.