Do you have a wine cellar? Probably the answer is YES: But do you have...

I guess most of the wine nerds lurking here will answer YES to that question. But I have an additional question, that might be more of a challenge. Do you…
…still have the very FIRST bottle intact, that actually started your wine collection/cellar? I do.

This strange world called “wine” had slowly been growing inside me like a seed, planted by my grandfather (who made his own wine) a long time ago but hadn’t really started to blossom quite yet. Sure, I was already drinking wine but very seldom and with not much interest, other than just the occasional “normal” curiosity like any other average consumer these days. But there was something there… I remember a special feeling everytime I passed shelves full of wines in supermarkets as I was travelling the world. There was this something, that I couldn’t put my finger on. Some type of lure, a slowly growing interest in what was behind all those different labels. We need to go back to the early 90s now, when this interest kept growing without me really realising it. I don’t remember every detail but I do remember when I walked into a normal supermarket in Puerto Montt, some 1000 km south of Santiago de Chile, while travelling as a backpacker and while browsing the shelves of vinew decided to buy…this.

It was the most expensive bottle I could find in that supermarket and I thought to myself that it must be special. Despite the curiosity of having a peek what’s inside, as it turns out, I didn’t open it but transported it in my backpack all the way to home sweet home in Stockholm, which I guess is almost on the other side of this Lonely Planet. This bottle was the first wine of what became my wine collection. And it’s still here!

Open it? I just can’t…

Does anyone else have their first sweetheart love still intact?

My wine interest started when I worked at a vineyard in college. I got one of their earliest made Cab Francs, a 1998, mostly as a keepsake to never drink at this point. Still in my cellar!

Wow. That’s cool. I have no idea what wine(s) started my collection. I think I just started buying more than I was drinking, and once the boxes started piling up, I though I might as well age some of it. Then my parents enabled my bad decision by buying a Eurocave. Then it was suddenly full and I had boxes under their pool table. Then offsite storage and the rest is history.

I do still have quite a few bottles from those early days, though. They’re mostly (but not all) domestic, 2006-2007 vintages. I’ve been opening them up since many are probably not getting any better at this point. It’s really satisfying to have finally reached the point where some of those early purchases have become more mature and actually reached what I consider their peak. Of course, a lot of the wines I bought just a couple of years later won’t reach that point for decades more.

To paraphrase Ceasar questioning Jesus, "What is “First”?

Looking at CT, the first wine I ever logged in as a purchase is a 2003 Château Léoville Barton that I purchased in June of 2006. I tried a bottle at a resturant and really liked it and found it on the shelf at winex a week later. It’s still in my cellar. Anyone try it recently?

I’m sure I had 20-30 bottle around when I first started using CT but 2006 is about the time I was getting serious about starting a cellar so this bottle might be the official start of the cellar.

I can even remember back that far…

I have a bottle from the first full case I purchased at age 21.

I started celllaring wine in the late '90’s but the oldest purchase I still have is a '99 Spotswoode I bought in 2003. I am not really a sentimentalist so the thought of keeping my first bottle purchase never really crossed my mind.

In my non sentimentalist mind the big question that pops up is " Why not drink the wine and simply keep the empty bottle??"

I also have a bottle from the first case 1989 Barbaresco Asili Ceretto. Close out $19.99

Actually, yes…

Story goes something like this: The night my wife and I were engaged, we ordered this wine at a very chic restaurant in Boston. I was 24 at the time, and basically just ordered what the sommelier suggested. I had no idea what I was ordering. My brand new fiancé loved it. (Maybe she liked the wine, maybe she was just happy, but either way, she loved it.)

Later, I ordered a case (first time I had ever done that), and gave it to my wife on our wedding night with the following instructions:

We drink one bottle on our wedding night.

One on our first anniversary.
One on our 5th anniversary.
One on our 10th anniversary.
.
.
.
Last one on our 50th anniversary.

There is an excellent chance this is WAY over the hill by our 50th anniversary, but who cares? And, since I have a specific schedule, I never have to worry about whether I “should” open a bottle.

I have 2 bottles of the initial case I bought in 1995 - the 1990 Castello dei Rampolla Chianti Classico Riserva.

Actually, yes I do. And with a little story, with a history of misses.

So I really got into wine right after law school in 1992. My Dad had introduced me to wine as a kid, they always had it at the table. And I enjoyed wine throughout law school, drank a glass or two most evenings with a nice meal. But it was not until after I graduated, when I had a fair bit of discretionary spending, that I really got going. Not knowing exactly what I was doing, I pretty much drank what I bought, regardless of vintage. And had some killer stuff, considering the load of Bordeaux on the market at the time from vintages like 1982, 86, 89 and 90.

And then I met this super hot, tall, athletic, charming, blond chick. Like really hot. Actually, my Dad sorta introduced me to her. He stayed at my apartment for one week while he was doing a consulting project, and he met her in the parking lot. Told me, you really need to go outside and meet her. And so I did. And she was smokin hot. Had a cool dog as well. I sweet talked her, we got together that night to watch Melrose Place, and I brought a bottle of 1986 Stag’s Leap. Just a casual thing, not really a date.

Our first date was a week or so later at the cool wine bar in town, Dexter’s. We had our first date there at the end of 1992. Sometime in late 1993, I saw that Dexter’s had it’s own Cab made, vintage 1992. So I bought it. I knew Chris was the one. We were quite the item by then. So I figured that I would store this wine for a special occasion. We bought a house in 1995, married in 1996. I bought my first wine fridge shortly thereafter. I put this bottle in it, along with a 1965 birth-year Mouton, and a smattering of other things. And then I forget about the Dexter’s bottle. Fast forward to 2004, and we had 3 hurricanes in 4 weeks. We lost power for weeks, and I lost my entire wine collection, except for those few bottles that I took with me, which included this Dexter’s.

And then I forgot about it again.

I’ve been meaning to pop it at a special time, but I bet is dead. I recently told Tim, the wine manager at Dexter’s then, and who owns Tim’s Wine Market now, about it, and he laughed that it’s probably dead. But with wine, you just never know.

This thread just moved the wine forward in the queue. I have an anniversary coming up . . . .

Chris remains as hot as ever. My Norwegian girl, by way of Miami. California cool.

Great story. But, wine is made for drinking. Make a special time and drink it.

Thanks, Howard.

What I have always loved about Miran’s posts, whether it was back in the day on eBob, or here, is that he communicates wine as a passion, a lifestyle, not a simple product. That’s my experience with wine as well, there is a thread of wine in most of my entire life, from family, to friends, to Chris. Corny as it may sound, it’s like the glue that binds it all together. This thread hit me, as so much of my experience with Chris has been through a lifestyle that meanders through sport, travel, family, son, work, with wine at every step. We even took our honeymoon in Chinon and Bordeaux, and then 9 months later, a follow-up in Southern Rhone. We are now planning my Dad’s 80th, and yes, it’s about wine, cuisine, and family. I will have a killer line-up for Pops, he’s still spry, and like me, chasing around the love of his life. My mom is a lot like Chris, ridiculously athletic - did a triathlon at 70, and still does masters swimming, yoga and weights at 79 - and of course, finishes off the day with some fine wine.

Bobby, such an awesome story - cheers to the two of you and your family too! Only thing missing is a “then” pic to accompany the now.

You would laugh at my haircut. It was Flock of Seagulls meets law practice, a bad synthesis of trying to be professional yet under-ground at the same time. Like a new age mullet. She looks the same. She might actually look better. Sadly, I do not.

I don’t have the first bottle I ever collected (89 Cos d’Estournel, purchased my Senior year at Hopkins in Baltimore and ruined by bad storage by yours truly), but I still have three from the motley assortment of five cases that I packed in my car when I decided to move West from New Jersey, and landed in Kansas City. Based on the fourth from last I had a year or two ago (98 Allemand Les Chaillots), they are still holding up in fine style. All purchased from the Princeton Corkscrew when it was in its old location and I was slinging wine there post-Internet 1.0 bubble bursting.

They are:

1. 1996 Ducru Beaucaillou
2. 1996 Gouges NSG Les St Georges
3. 1998 Allemand Reynard

I’m in no rush to drink any of them, especially the Allemand based on how amazing the Chaillots was. I kind of like having them - they’re a little bit like what’s left of the first cask that started the Solera of my wine journey.

Not really sad about it…but no. The first wine I bought planning to age was a 2001 Estancia Chardonnay. It was the wine my ex-wife’s father chose to serve at our wedding. The wine & the marriage did not last. The first “splurge” wine I bought was the 2002 Joseph Phelps Insignia for $85. That also is no longer in my cellar. However, I would say the first time I planned to buy, age, and feel like I could understand a wine was the 2005 N. Joley Coulée de Serrant. I bought a case for $33/bottle from Crush. I still have one of those left. But I never felt attached to the “first” of any wine I bought. This was a cool question though and I’m liking some of the stories!

Pull the cork, take a sip, dump it down the drain and let that be the lesson that says a day early is better than a day late.

I need lessons myself.

I have a bottle from the first full case I ever bought - 1974 Fetzer Cabernet. Purchased in 1977. $30 FOR THE CASE.

The oldest bottle I have that I purchased on release is the 1973 Mouton (Picasso Label), purchased at Zachy’s probably also in 1977.

The bottle I have owned the longest is a NV Brotherhood Winery something or other that we bought in the summer of 1976 when we learned, at a very young age, that you never go to a winery, drink everything they offer you for free, and then make buying decisions. You then take the wine home, taste one of the bottles you bought, and ask yourself why you bought this sh*t.

I do not have a bottle of the 1957 Chateauneuf that I bought for about $2.25 in 1967 or 1968 (at age 16 or so) that started me on the road to hell.