A couple of mixed cases from OW Loeb of Hock and Mosel and a couple of mixed case of Claret from Justerini’s.
Iirc the selections included, from 1971
Egon muller Schazhofberger Kabinett
Prüm Wehlenhur Sonnenburg Kab
Prüm Grächer Himmelreich Kab
Schloss Böckelhdimer Spätkese but I forget the vineyard
Von Hövel Oberemmeler Hütte Kabinett
And a few bottles of La Gita Manzanilla and rather more of Dom Thalabert for house red.
Specifics are a bit fuzzy and not CT back then!
I graduated with an overdraft so the Auslese and BA came later. Back then these wines were affordable.
The clarets were less exalted from 1970
Ch Lagrange
Ch Pontet Canet
Ch batailley
Ch Beycheville
Ch du Tertre
But good value.
These may not look serious by today’s criteria but for me back then they were.
I started right at about 30. I wasn’t really buying in a decent number until 35ish which was only 5 years ago. For some reason after I found wineberserkers my purchasing increased exponentially. Not sure if the two are correlated
I worked at RN74 Seattle and Bar Boulud in NYC during my early 20’s so I got a pretty good crash course in high end Burgundy before 25. I didn’t really start buying serious wine until after I left the industry. Started buying higher end stuff at age 26 and started paying for offsite storage when I turned 30. Never looked back!
I think I was 25 when I started a small stack of cardboard cases in my apartment, and the next year I rented a house and started putting stuff in the cellar. My older brother had started to drink wine with my dad and he got me interested. The wine that really hooked me was a 1985 Ridge Geyserville, and a bit later a 1979 Gruaud Larose.
I think there are two questions here. The first is when you start “seriously” buying wine - having been bitten by the bug, learning as much as possible, buying wine very intentionally for reasons other than just having something to drink that week, trying to taste as much as possible and make informed buying decisions. The second is more about wealth, about having the money and space (or even more money for offsite storage) to accumulate wine at scale.
My answer to the first question would be 20. I was at university in England. I befriended employees at two excellent wine stores so that I could taste widely and get their employee discount, and I persuaded my housemates to help fund my wine purchases so that they would give me £6 toward the cost of each bottle and I would fund the rest - and then drink it with them. That plus my friends’ discounts allowed me to buy wines in the £15-20 range that I otherwise wouldn’t have been able to justify or, frankly, afford with any frequency. I didn’t have money and I definitely didn’t have space so I couldn’t accumulate wine. But I would say the way I bought wine then was just as serious as it is now.
My answer to the second question would be 32, shortly after I got into the wine industry. I was exhausted after my second harvest but the upside was that I had made a decent amount of overtime money so I put that toward a 200-bottle wine fridge and had enough disposable income and space to start accumulating a bit of wine, even though my budget wasn’t really much higher than it had been in my early 20s.
I was 26 living in Sydney and engaged to a Malaysian (who was still in Malaysia). I was not sure how keen my future partner might feel about a wine collection. So I started buying some cases of wine to build up a bit of a cellar. My thought process ran along the lines of; “better to seek forgiveness than ask for permission”.
I need not have worried, 40 years later she is still supportive of my wine habit.
I agree about the first two, but not about ‘70 Bordeaux. The only wines that I’ve tasted that were good are Petrus and Latour. The fair haired boy, Lafite, was always a massive disappointment. Obviously, YMMV. I still own some Pichon Lalande (magnum) and a few others that I won’t sell because they are garbage.
I didn’t start collecting until my late 30’s, though my interest in wine began in my early 20’s. I’m 57 now.
My grandfather had a fairly large collection, so there was always wine at family dinners and I was allowed a small taste as a teenager. I probably tasted some gems and had no idea what I was drinking.
I wouldn’t say I became truly interested in wine though, until I took my first tour of the Willamette Valley -practically in my backyard - not long after I turned 21. My best buddy was a waiter and got a job in a more upscale restaurant. He wanted to learn more about wine so we went on a tour. It was kind of funny, as kids we passed through wine country so many times going to his dads house in Pacific City.
A few years later, I lived in NW Portland and started to haunt Liner and Elsen, when it was on 21st. Tasted and learned a lot. Picked up plenty of bottles but never quite had a collection.
Fast forward a decade, moved to Las Vegas, own a house, settled in. Bottles accumulate.
I was 22 the first “aha” moment when a waiter recommended a RRV Zin for my rack of lamb. Still have a soft spot for them.
I was 36 when I bought my first case intended for drinking over a period of years.
I was 39 when I started buying with a long term plan.
I guess I started as soon as I had the disposable income that allowed for it.
Started working in a wine shop when I was 23. Tasted quite a bit of pretty decent stuff and by 25 I was not only buying good wines now that I had gotten into the world of fine wines, but also cellaring the best of them with the intent of both collecting them and letting them age.
I had a definite palate shift. When I first began buying to cellar, I bought a reasonable amount of Pinot Noir because I was from Oregon and wanted to see what my home area was producing, and a bit of Burgundy as well. But I also bought wuite a bit of bigger wine as well, ranging fron Napa Cabernet to CdP, primarily Beaucastel. And quite a bit of Ridge Zinfandel. But only a smattering of whites or sparkling wine.
About the time I turned 35, I was never opening the bigger wines and buying more German/French white wines than red wines (though still close to 50/50). That’s continued and 90% of what I buy now is sparkling or white wine, though if trading counts it’s probably closer to 80/20 white to red.
I started discovering wine when I moved to France aged 23. I was living in Dax, a town in Les Landes, about 90 minutes south of Bordeaux. All the supermarkets were full of Bordeaux, literally dozens of references. I knew nothing about wine and there was no guide I knew of at the time, but I wanted to know which ones were the best, so I started trying them. Wine was cheap then, at around 10 francs for a decent Cru Bourgeois, and 100 francs (15 euros) for a Montrose or a Barton for example.
I was lucky - not only was wine cheap, but it was very good - the 82 vintage. Even the novice that I was could understand that it was worth keeping, so I started doing so, especially after tasting a few older bottles to compare. Of course, little did I know that I’d started with the best!
