Bam! And there is the answer. I often don’t open my precious wines because I just don’t want to drink them with what I’m eating. Admittedly, we are usually a cook first, choose wine to go with it household. I devote 10% of my home cellar to wines to be consumed short term with the aim to have a lot of variety in that section (the rest of my cellar has much less variety, all the usual bourgeois suspects discussed and debated ad nauseum) . Like Sarah, that 10% provides significantly more than 10% of the joy I get from wine in general (a fact I’ve been pondering a lot lately).
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We can help you justify.
Kris,
Great idea. Now all I need to do is find a guy in my neighborhood with a deep cellar, or if I’m the guy with the deep cellar I need to find people in my neighborhood to invite. I’m not picky about that! It’s just most of my neighbors are serious connoisseurs… of the local microbrews.
Dan Kravitz
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Joe,
I’ve got 18 - 20 ounces in a decanter in my fridge. It’s an experiment for sure, see if it holds up in the fridge for ~3 weeks. I’ll report back.
Thanks,
Dan
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Looking forward to it, Dan!
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Totally agree with Chris.
Offsite
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I definitely need to buy more daily drinkers and have been. 90% of my wine needs age. I’m currently buying more daily drinkers.
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Or just backfill. Between WS Pro and auctions, there are lots of back vintages out there. And if you’re just looking for good drinkers rather than trophies, the markup is often small or even none.
I have been getting older vintages of nice wine as well! Often 25-50% cheaper than prices today!
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Backfilling only works for some wines…
I’ve been able to backfill some of the Northern Rhone i wanted. A bit of Levet and Barge. Levet is getting harder. Some Barolo has also been possible.
But for some of them the price is really steep if i want to backfill.
For most of the Jura or new generation Spätburgunder i am looking for, it is impossible.
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The solution to having a cellar full of wine (needing years of aging) and therefore nothing to drink in the cellar is simple: go buy some $10 to $30 wine at your local retailer(s) or online even. There is an ocean of wine in that price range and widely available for you to purchase and, in turn, drink whenever you feel like opening a bottle.
I’ve been “seriously” into wine for about 15 years but have only had the means to collect and store more than a couple dozen bottles in the last few years. I have around 200 now and will probably stay at that level for some years. I have found that what works well for me is to dedicate 1/4 of that number to wines that are ready to drink. That means that I always have 50 bottles that are ready to go. I dedicate another 50 bottles to wines that need 1-3 years so that they will “age into” the ready-to-drink category soon. Then another 50 to wines that need 3-5 years, and another 50 to wines that need more than 5 years. These are all approximates.
I rotate through the “now” wines rapidly because I drink a fair number of young wines (especially whites, which only make up 15% of my cellar but make up 50% of my consumption) and I make sure that I’m broadly replacing wines that are taken out of each bucket (basically each shelf in my wine fridge is dedicated to one bucket or another).
I don’t know exactly what my means or capacity will be like in 5 years’ time, so this system works well for me. If my capacity increases, I can scale up each bucket as needed. If my drinking patterns change, I can adjust my priorities. And I have to remind myself that, just as it is possible now to get wonderful mature wines on the secondary market, so it will be in the future. Age what you can, age what you love, but leave room for the beautiful near-term.
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Funny…a number of those pallets are mags. We were just talking about this years Monopole Cru offer too…
…just sayin’
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This is the path that has been working for me.
I think you need to add in a lot of backfilling, especially since it’s pretty easily done these days, at least in many categories.
Otherwise, you’re telling a new collector “spend your first 10-20 years drinking mostly $10-30 wine while you let your collection mature.” That’s not a good plan as far as wine enjoyment, and it’s also not a good plan for learning which wines to buy and age.
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Sure, some back-filling should be in the mix.
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Put my case together. Came home and grabbed a 99 Ravenswood Icon to go with the burgers Im gonna grill.
These bottles arent going to drink themselves!
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Drinking an incredible bargain - Nola’s 2005 Cab, picked up at Berserkerfest two years ago for a song, under $20 or something - tonight. Accompanied a nice steak. All as I contemplate whether to open a '98 Guigal d’Ampuis for the kid’s dog’s birthday celebration this Saturday. Perhaps a 2011 Pegau CdP, too.
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I hope the dog is turning at least three, so he’s legal drinking age in human years.
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Four simple words:
Drink more.
Buy less.
Longer answer:
How many times a year do you have special occasions or go to tastings that you feel are worthy of opening one of your very best bottles? If we honestly look at how often that happens, for many of us the number is a lot lower than we imagined when we were buying the wine.
Multiply that number of actual special occasions by 5 and set aside that many of your absolute best bottles. That’s 5 years of special occasion bottles. Everything else is now a daily drinker.
Don’t think of it as relegating the daily drinkers to a lesser league. No, they have been promoted. They will have the opportunity to fulfill their destiny; to give pleasure from being consumed.
If you’ve got a cellar full of wines that are too young to be any good yet, that’s not a problem either. That’s paying your dues. You can pay them with time by purchasing early and cellaring the wine yourself. Drink less expensive wines that are decent young while you’re waiting. Or you can pay them with cash by buying mature bottles on the auction market.
Ultimately, though, it comes down to those four short words:
Drink more.
Buy less.
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