Wanted to get your thoughts on how to transition my cellar from 75% Cab to 75% Pinot.
Our tastes have changed over the past few years and Burgundy - Pinot is the preferred grape. I have a feeling most of the cabs will never be consumed.
What is the best way to swap out the cellar? A good percentage are collectible or desirable.
(I am based in TX if that matters).
B
But what happens when you lose your taste for pinot and begin to dig Champagne? Are you going to do another tidal switch?
I would take it easy before transitioning to some on/off binary switch. Up your purchases of pinot noir, but explore other areas, perhaps sell-gift-donate-drink down your cabs and see if something else doesn’t float your boat. No need to be all-in one or the other. This dichotomy of thinking is why the world is having the problems it does.
Keep the cabs and just add more pinot. Over time your tastes will continue to change and you will appreciate the older cabs. I started drinking bordeaux in the late 60’s, moved to rhone style wines for a while. Then lots of pinot based wine, now drinking a lot more cabs. Buy wines that will last.
If you have the patience, commerce corner is a good way to sell, purchase and trade wines. This approach can be a bit tedious, especially if you are looking to move a substantial number of wines.
The other route is auction…much quicker and less effort required on your part. Many different auction houses to consider, and your collection will probably determine which house is best for you. The options range from winebid to Acker, HDH and everything in between.
How many bottles are you looking to move, and are they in case quantities or single bottles?
If they are desirable/collectable, then it should be pretty easy to do some trades or sales on commerce corner. But I do agree take it slow and don’t get rid of it all. It also depends on your age. If you are 40, some of the hold-them advice makes more sense than if you are 75.
The wines I don’t particularly love that I overbought are my casual party wines—the ones I open when we have a bunch of people over to watch a football game or the ones I bring to somebody else’s house. Sometimes the price point is appropriate for casual party wine, and sometimes I‘m a generous host.
Are there Cabs that you still enjoy? If so, I’d consider keeping those.
How big is your cellar? 75% of 100 bottles is a lot different than 75% of 10,000 bottles. There is a big different in the mechanics of what you want to do depending on how much we are talking about.
The simple answer is drink/gift more cab and buy more Pinot, but you already knew that. Are you really asking, how do I sell bottles of Cabernet?
I made the transition from a zin dominant cellar to cabernet. I just lessened the amount of zin I was purchasing and actually started drinking more of it to create space for other varietals. Cabernet takes a lot of space if you collect them from release and like to put age on them like I do. Maybe look into a small off site locker to continue aging those cabs unless you are set against keeping them. Otherwise use them as collateral to expand your burg collection.
Assuming you’d like to recoup a buck or two on the wines you don’t think you’ll like, as was mentioned above, I’d post them here in Commerce Corner.
If the cabs are ones that will age well, I’d keep them, or some portion of them, depending on what quantities we’re talking about here. Your interests have changed before, who is to say they won’t again? Or maybe you’ll enjoy them as a change of pace, or when the company or food warrant, or when participating in tastings with that theme.
As I’ve had producers or categories where my interest has waned, it’s still been interesting having the declining stash of them and revisiting them once in awhile, and you can find enjoyment and learning from them even if they’re not what you would go out and buy today. And sometimes you’ll say, “maybe I should look back into this producer or category.”
Then again, I’m a fairly open-minded wine lover, and I’m more of a variety guy than a “only drink the thing that’s my favorite and little else” kind of guy, so that all just comes from my perspective, which I know is not everyone’s.
Plenty of good advice here already. Much is dependent on the quantities you’re talking about, but selling through auction is not hard at all if you have volume and (especially) the right labels.
Thought I’d add what I did in a similar situation. I started out buying lots of Cabernet-based wines (California and Bordeaux primarily). Drank them and loved them but overbought relative to my long term tastes. As I started coming to appreciate Pinot Noir (California and Burgundy) and Barolo/Barbaresco, I shifted my buying to these new areas. Lo and behold my cellar distribution changed over a few years. I still kept a lot of the Cabernet because I still like drinking them, just not so often. And a handful of Cabernets that I thought I’d never drink I sold via auction.