Francois' 40,000 Bottle Collection?

WINE TALK
1

I saw in a recent thread that Francois Audouze is in the process of moving his 40,000 bottle collection. It makes me wonder if his is the largest private collection in the world. Does anyone know of a larger one?

2

There are people in this city (Hong Kong) w cellars that would rival that in terms of quantity.

3

Yes. There are several which are much larger. Some people own warehouses to store their wines.

4

These are the two largest I believe private cellars in CT. User 861827 was over 100K bottles when they first joined but looks like they sold off a bunch, which is probably why they inventoried on CT in the first place.

861827 USA 67,526

Sample User Seattle, Washington, USA 46,275

5

Does “Sample User’s” last name rhyme with wine?

6

Not even remotely close to the largest. It seems many people with gigantic collections are not always on Cellar Tracker although they should be. I know two such individuals within striking distance of my hometown.

7

That is a lot of Yellow Tail!

8

My impression is that people with say over 50,000 bottles are quite wealthy and would have long ago hired someone to inventory and manage their cellars. Much as I love CT, I’m not sure what features would be all that useful to such people. (Not that I know any personally.)

9

That’s only about 3,500 cases…allowing for some large formats.

10

What Ken said, and 40k while a ton of wine, is not even close to the level at which many people play.

11

40K isnt even close to being the largest collection.

IMHO (and I’ve talked to Eric about this) CT doesn’t (normally) work for those larger cellar clients. They often have multiple offsite locations (some lacking internet connectivity) which makes CT more difficult to use versus other wine management software.

12

While there are many who may have larger collections than Francois, how many collectors have the range of old and rare wines as he?

13

Or his passion!

14

Or his willingness to drink his old and rare bottles!

15

+1

16

His posts are the best stories on this board, by far.

17

I personally know of 2 cellars which are bigger than that in quantity and might rival his in quality

18

His passion nor the quality of his wines are even in question.
The OP was about whether a 40K bottle cellar is the largest.

19

Who cares if it is the largest … I don´t think there are other cellars with

  1. so many bottles of that age
  2. of that quality and rarity
  3. of that diversity …

However - I still make it to bring a good interesting bottle he doesn´t already know … [cheers.gif]

Seriously, it´s one thing to stock cases and cases of (for instance) expensive Bordeaux or DRCs - large quantities of the same or similar wines - or a cellar with multitudes of aged, drinkable and very different bottles back to the 18th century …

(but sure, there might be another cellar somewhere … didn´t own Andrew Lloyd Webber a huge cellar … I know he sold a lot …)

20

Tain’t my cellar…