I would like to leave some wines for my kids too but so far they show absolutely no interest in the subject despite bringing them to visit vineyards all over the place since young age.
This question could be combined with how many bottles you already have in your cellar: If you have more that you can reasonably drink in any reasonable expectation of your lifetime, and don’t have anyone to whom you plan to leave your cellar, then continuing to buy ageworthy wines is about the buying, not the drinking. I’m not talking about early drinkers (or ageworthy wines that you plan to drink early.)
So, those who answered that they’ll never stop buying wines that need substantial cellaring, would you say the same if you already had 5,000 bottles? 10, 000 bottles? Jens?
This is a genuinely interesting question.
I talked about this with a UK collector / drinker last year who has a truly amazing cellar:—ranging from magnums of pre-1995 Ramonet Montrachet to old Henri Gouges blanc to 1950s Rayas—all bought pretty much on release.
His advice was to aim to stop buying at age 60, which seems fair enough, and to back-fill in so far as possible within the period prior to that.
Seems pretty sensible, unless you intend to pass your cellar on to someone, which would be the ideal scenario.
I’ll stop buying when you can pry the credit card from my cold dead hands.
In the meantime, get the f*ck outta the way - I got wine to buy!
Well, my cellar is around 3000 bottles. Depending on the vintage(s) I buy approx 400-500 bottles per year with a yearly consumption of maybe 350-400 bottles.
Conclusion: If would stop buying today my 3000 bottles would last only 7.5 years ![[shock.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/0/0b1dcf699ec319f43254f92e3f145786dcd93904.gif "shock"){kind=small}
For sure, I will slow down my purchases when I’m getting older but a horror scenario for me would be to start calculating at age 60 how long my bottles would last, stop buying and then walk into my cellar at age 85 so see my last 36 bottles sitting in my empty cellar screaming “time has come dude”. I’m very happy to still have -let’s say- 1000 or 1500 bottles in my cellar in my 90s. Whatever happens with them when my time has come…
I’m ok with the adoption thing but we have to argue about your plans slowing down your purchases then ![[cheers.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/0/0ff9bfcdb0964982cd3240b6159868fbdf215b1a.gif "cheers"){kind=small}
A cellar is multigeneration project and beside our wine “loving” daughter we have godchilds which love wine, therefore there are a lot of interested parties for the remaining cellar. So stopping isn’t an option, slowing down the purchases most probably a must when going in retirement due to rising prices and falling income. I’m happy to have started early to have some mature wines of all kind from everyday consumption to special events and I would love to see the next generation profiteering from this buying policy later on and following this path. Farmers say that you are planting a walnut tree always for the next generation and it’s a little bit like Martin Luther said:" If I would think the world coming to an end tomorrow I woult plant an apple tree today."
I am also likely to inherit some wine.
agreed, and I’m 64. I currently have enough wine to last into my 80s. I bought from 7 producers on Berserkerday (thank you notes can be PM’d) and a couple of those are age worthy. I have taught my children to drink good wine. Gregory likes SQN whites and Jacob likes Scarecrow. Not exactly Alf’s style but you get the point. They can split the cellar down the middle and spend years thinking about how their parents left them all this great wine.
Sounds like the arc of Parker’s palete.
Ok, that’s a question of definition. For me, a “wine consumer” is someone who buys wine on a regular basis for immediate consumption. Someone who has any kind of mid- and long-term buying strategy and laying down wines for ageing is -at least from my point of view- a “wine collector” and as a result automatically a “wine consumer” (unless you have an investment-only background).
So, a wine collector is always a wine consumer while a wine comsumer is not necessarily a wine collector
It also kind of sounds like the episode of the Twilight Zone where Burgess Meredith survives a nuclear holocaust and can now spend the rest of his life reading, only he breaks his glasses. It would be a cruel irony to have a cellar full of amazing and mature wines, and no longer have the palate to appreciate them.
Fortunately for me, my fiance tells me I’ll be dead long before my sense of taste starts to decline.
This is an interesting topic. I just turned 48 (Berserkers Day every year). I think about this often. I’m in my buying prime window now. I buy the best I can, within reason, until it hurts. I enjoy sharing my cellar, but I really love the collecting and hunting part of the hobby. I don’t think I’d stop buying unless the writing was on the wall. This is a lifetime hobby.
Buying new releases is an issue though because I buy a good proportion of Burgundy and Bordeaux. I like some age on them. I still don’t imagine I’d quit buying until I’m 60. Maybe I’ll stop buying vintage port in a declared vintage or two/early fifties. I really think Port is the stuff I’ll be sipping in my rocker.
I may stop buying new releases, but I’d probably not stop buying unless I was utterly sure I had more than I would ever drink. I don’t expect I’ll ever drink them all anyway. That is not a goal for me. It is such a wonderful hobby and one you can share. I would hope my wife or children will enjoy the ones I leave or it would guide their education in that regard. The ones I buy tend to get better and more valuable as they age, so if it was not their thing they could always sell it. My wife loves good wine for sure and she’s 12 years younger than me, so I don’t think they will go to waste.
Ha, under that definition, I guess that I would be a collector!
What I am saying is, the next so-called vintage of the century, I’m not going out and buying the Vieux Chateau Certans of the world that really do need 25+ years. At the price of new releases, and the arc of maturation, I think that I am far better off backfilling. I just got in a mixed case of Bordeaux from HDH from 1982-1995 vintages, many of which cost me less than current release prices for the exact same wine.
Stopped buying wine at age 57, after loading up on the great 2005 red Burgundy vintage…and some 2006 in both colors of Burgundy.
That was 8 years ago. At the “persuasion” of my wife, who said we had more than enough, bought it to consume and needed to (and our sons are not interested)…and… Other than buying a couple cases/year of Dauvissat Chablis (and some of their reds) through the 2009s, I’ve held to the discipline
24+ years of acquiring was a great idea; stopping was just as good of an idea, IMO. The visiting and acquiring was fun, too…and I miss it, and have lost interest in current vintages and in tasting as frequently…but…is it sensible.
Glad we had one honest reply in this thread!
I have quit buying long agers now at 68. Don’t know if I will live long enough to enjoy them and don’t see this as a long-term investment for my kids. I would hope I’m still drinking good wine at 88 but who knows?
My two boys are 5 1/2 and 1 1/2, I"ll be in my early 50’s when they are getting into their 20’s. Hopefully I"ll be around and they will like and appreciate wine the way I did at that age and I’ll keep buying. Otherwise I’ll tone it down, drink up the cellar and buy bigger wine.
I’ve noticed that every regular wine drinker I know’s palate changes in their mid 60’s to needing more robust flavours.
Having just entered that age decade, and having followed just the opposite trajectory for the past decade, a) it’s hard to imagine this will be the case, and b) if it does, I’m pretty well screwed 
I answered the poll based on the original question about New-Release wines, which I took to mean en-primeur or mailing list offers. I’ve only done that for one winery in my lifetime, Dry River in NZ. However, I still buy lots of wine for laying down.