How often do buy wine just so you can keep a vertical going? How important to you is it? Are you going to open a bunch and drink them as a vertical tasting?
I ask this because I, like many of us, try to keep verticals going when possible. I started it with the intent of opening multiple years worth at a party so we could taste through them all at one time. I have done that once now, and it was only three years worth. I find that most of the time we want to drink a variety of wines at a party and not stick with just one thing, definitely not one producer. I have seen the posts where there was a tasting with five or ten years worth of a wine and it sounds fantastic, but I do not know that I want to have a tasting like that, but then I do.
I keep buying certain wines every year just to keep it going. These are all wines I enjoy so I am not buying them just to keep the vertical going…but in a way I am. I am conflicted.
Agreed - matched vintage pairs is as far as I ever get when having friends round, and even friends who are into their wine would be bored by multiple different vintages of the same wine in an evening. It might come together with online wine enthusiasts meeting for an offline, but even then I’d not expect to supply all the vintages as they’d want to bring some themselves.
These days I’m happy to have different vintages of some wines, but would lose no sleep whatsoever if there was a ‘gap’ in a vertical. I don’t expect to drink different vintages together, but it’s nice to have the option of an older or more primary wine.
There are wines I buy every year; some of them I cellar, others I do not. To the extent I have verticals going, no purchases are made for the purpose of maintaining unbroken verticals.
I will, however, sometimes buy a bottle or two of vintage x when the cellar already holds a sufficient amount of vintage y. Like others before me, I can’t recall ever opening more than two vintages of any given wine at a given time. However, experience with any wine across multiple vintages can certainly help one gain an understanding of how a wine presents under certain vintage conditions; eventually, that can be helpful knowledge.
I like following a wine, even in off years. It gives me an idea of the winemaker’s craft and I like comparing differences almost as much as ‘appreciating’ only good vintages.
We serve verticals at different events and I think many people enjoy comparing and contrasting vintages of the same wine.
But, I admit to having a bias toward variety. I’d rather taste ten different wines rather than the best one of the group ten times.
Weak vintages have a lot to offer for the oenophile who likes “tasting what happened each vintage!”
Right but that’s a little bit different. The OP asked about buying just to keep a vertical. I may have the same wines from different vintages, but didn’t buy them just to keep a string going. If I taste a wine and don’t like that vintage, I’m not buying it.
It’s not often that I have a vertical. The exceptions are Ridge Monte Bello, Dauvissat Forest and Les Clos, Ceritas Porter Bass chard, Faiveley CDC, Rhys Swan, Tempier Tourtine (but stopped this Bandol). I tend towards only buying a wine if it has some notes which describe a wine I would like - from CT, Burghound, trusted WBers (many of you). I have plenty where I skip a year or years and I’ll stop a vertical with no problem if the wine is weak that year. An unbroken vertical doesn’t interest me much. I recently was able to add three bots of the 2005 Ceritas Porter Bass chardonnay, which was their first year. If I drink a wine, like it and I have a vertical, I may try to replace it, depending on my quantity on hand.
Tried for the purpose of vertical tastings that never materialized. I do have verticals in my collection, but that’s a function of keeping a pipeline of wines I love.
This. For example I’ll buy at least one or more bottles of Ollivier Briords Muscadet pretty much every year but sometimes I’ll drink them all and sometimes I’ll save a few.
I think I have two complete verticals: Montelena Estate Cab and Altare Brunate. The Altare is complete. The Montelena will end with the 2015 since I won’t live that long and I don’t want Victor showing up at my funeral to say “I told you so!”
Not as many people do it as I thought, interesting. i have posted previously about dropping some clubs and buying less, stopping worrying about verticals may one easy way to do that. As I said, I am not likely to drink them as a vertical and I already have gaps in some, but I always thought it was a neat idea.