how do you pick the bottle you are opening?

Curious to how everyone decides what bottle to open outside of special occasions or when they already have a bottle in mind. Say Friday afternoon you decide you want a bottle to open Friday night, how do you narrow down your selection? Do you just wing it? Do you ever get decision paralysis? Or do you have your own system for narrowing it down?

Yep. This happens to me weekly. I have a fairly young cellar with much time needed for wines to reach their drinking window. I’m also a fairly new collector and still trying as many different wines as I can. My decision is usually guided by what is oldest or closest to an optimal drinking window, value (random Friday night means I’m not looking for that knockout bottle), and what I’m eating. My selection may also depend on the need to decant or not and the time I have. I created a ‘drink now’ list in cellartracker that has about 200 of my 650 bottles that I prioritized to drink over the next few years. The selection usually comes from this list.

  • What’s for dinner?
  • Any bottles that have arrived recently and are in line to sample?
  • Default: one of the usual low cost case purchases in red or white depending on mood

I ask myself a few questions. Am I looking to pair with a particular dinner or menu items. This usually means a cab, Syrah. Pinot or Bordeaux blend, or Chardonnay. If I am having greasy fried food or snacking on chips or popcorn then it will likely be a sparkling or an off dry Riesling. If I am looking for a quaffing drink, anything lighter bodied will do, red or white or sparkling.

Joseph,

I like to drink red burgundies on Friday nights, but did not start collecting in earnest until the 2005 vintage. Thus most of the bottles are not fully ready yet. I’ve pretty much drained my small stash of 2000’s and have a few bottles from 1999/2001/2002 that I am trying to save. More recently I have usually selected burgundies from 2007, 2005 (village level if possible), and 2006.

Have to say, the few 2011’s I’ve tried (Lafouge A-D La Chapelle, Mugnier NSG Marechale, Guillemot Narbantons, PYCM Volnay Champans, Jadot CSJ) have been quite accessible and delicious.

Cheers,
Doug

Other factors:

  • is there company and their tastes (this is pre 2020)
  • are we having cocktails, if so at least the next wine , maybe two, will not be too grand
  • summer / patio vs winter / living room

Etc etc

Big factor often is “oh we should try this”

The two most pertinent questions for us: What’s for dinner? What’s at temp?

Though we do occasionally go spelunking in the cellar right before dinner, we usually narrow things down in advance. Every week or so we pull 6-10 bottles from the cellar, stand the reds up under the stairs and chill some whites. We tend to pull an assortment of food friendly wines - dry Riesling, champagne, lesser red/white burgs, nebbiolo, a spanish white, maybe a beaujolais
Which wines exactly get chosen can be as nebulous as what sounds good or catches my eye on the way through the cellar, but is more often about checking in on something we haven’t tried lately, or what might be ready to taste for the first time after a few years asleep.

Sometimes, though, we play the “what will give us a slot” game. Since our racks are double deep and we never put two different wines in a slot, singles take up space that could be holding two. So when trying to choose between two wines, I might pull the one we have 3 of (giving us a free slot) instead of the one we have 4 of (leaving a slot with only one bottle). It’s as good a reason as any. :slight_smile:

Never, ever, ever what’s just arrived. Having made too many mistakes over the years, nothing gets opened before sitting at the very least for a few weeks and usually a lot longer. There’s plenty to drink in the meantime.

3 Likes

When I read the OP, I immediately thought this was too hard to answer. Then I thought, no, it’s an easy question. Now I look at some of the responses, and I am swinging back to hard to answer.

Who is drinking with me? Am I alone? With my wife? Friends or Family? How many people? Do they like wine? Do they only like certain kinds of wine? Or do I know what wines they don’t like? How sophisticated a palate does everyone have? Are they tasters or swillers?

What time of day is it? Or what day of the week? Inside or outside? Is it hot or cold weather? Are we at an activity?

Have we had anything else to drink? Are we going to drink anything else (or more)? Did they bring anything (this can be huge)?

Is it being paired with food?
Is it for a special occasion?
Are we wanting to explore or be creative or experiment?
Am I comparing this to something else (e.g., side-by-side, or something recently)?

Is it ready to drink? How long have I had it? How much did it cost? Do I have any more of these bottles? Do I have concerns about the wine?

1 Like

I find it’s really helpful to have a broad range of low-cost selections that I am either curious to try (currently: erbaluce, aligote, baga) or tried and true favorites (currently: soave, pelaverga) that can be opened anytime I’m stuck.

Check the bottom feeder threads and buy a few mixed cases - problem solved. There is so much great wine out there for under $25

1 Like

I follow Sarah’s method. We have small rack in our cellar that is not part of the larger racking. I fill in 10-15 wines at at a time of different wines that are either check-in wines, ready to drink from the cellar, or recently purchased for quick consumption. This narrows the nightly selection down to just a handful of different options. When the rack gets low I fill it back up. This helps keep my hands off longer term cellar holdings and it gives my wife direction that anything on that rack is fair game. Works well for our house.

TW

I walk into the wine cellar after I’ve been told « white or red « and I decide between good, better, and great.

Usually, it’s the food that is driving the wine selection. Far less frequently, my desire to sample a wine to see if I want to buy more will be the driving force. Then there’s a small smattering of random other factors that come into play less than 5% of the time.

When I am not in the mood for something specific, I do something similar to what Sarah posted above. I have a small area in my cellar that I call “death row” - I look there first when I want to open something. What do I put there? Sometimes I buy something to taste before ordering in quantity. Or when I am moving wines in the racks or putting away new purchases, I grab odd bottles that I am interested in opening soon and put them to the side. Or when I read a tasting note on this site (or CT), sometimes I will grab that wine and also set it to the side.

1 Like

A. food
B. Drinking window
C. Cost/Rarity vs. occasion
D. Impact on future buying

I have a crawl space wine cellar plus I store about 50 bottles comprised of a dozen varietals in my garage.

I use Cellar tracked resources (drinkability report, tasting notes and other screening methods) to queue up bottles too be moved from the Cellar to the garage. I make queued bottles every week or two.

When we decide on the evening meal I decide on a bottle to match and stand it up in the kitchen and, if appropriate, open it for air time before dinner.

This systems worked well for me for many years. Occasionally I will not have the right bottle in the garage in which case I make a special trip to the cellar.

my wife picks the genre (bubbles/still, white/red) and then I pick based on food if we are eating, or the occasion. We have “everyday drinkers”, “check-in” wines, and wines for special occasions, and since we live in an apartment, we have a limited amount on site, which helps narrow the selection.

Food is the first factor and then I go to good/better/best. If the wife is not having a glass then we skip better/best and go right to good to avoid the death stare. I’ll take a spin around the cellar if nothing jumps out at me, I had to the daily drinkers rack and pull something out.

I fit into the “match the food” category, though at times I pick the wine I want and match the food to that.

This happens embarrassingly often


Peter Rosback

Sineann

I ask my wife, red, white or pink?

I essentially cycle through wines that I have recently purchased and want to try, and wines that I haven’t tried for a while, depending on what I want to drink. I usually buy in quantities of 4+ and like to try things as they come in.