As spring shipments roll in, I’m realizing that I have more wine than I want to have. I’ve maxed out home storage, don’t want to start using an offsite, and am not really interested in selling. At the current rate of consumption, I’ll have enough wine for years probably.
I enjoy perusing emailed wine offers, Commerce Corner, and WineBid. I also am particularly susceptible to FOMO. So my vague intentions of “just buying less” haven’t really led to appreciable results. I think I need to put an official hiatus on buying for a time. I’m wondering how many of you have taken this step and whether you have any tips to be successful.
I find that I sometimes run out of certain categories of wine (Chablis and Chainti come to mind). So do I make exceptions for these? I also have been wanting a shot one day at a bottle of Jasud, so maybe I should continue on the Beta train? Should this be another exception? What about those few bucket list wines that I’ve always wanted to try that occasionally will have a deal to be found? And for how long does this moratorium last?
Just curious to hear other peoples experiences and what worked for them. Is this a good idea? Bad idea? Make me a lame WBer? I’m pretty sure it does. Let me know your thoughts!
I’ve just narrowed my purchases severely. Less exploring and more zeroing in on what I know I will like and drink. It allows me to go higher on per bottle costs while keeping my total bottle count going down. I could only imagine completely not buying anything if I knew I was going to stop with it altogether.
On a broader level, it’s totally normal to just stop buying for a while…but it’s hard, and since you’re curious about wine you’re going to constantly be in the position of wanting to try new things. Starting buying again is also pretty normal.
As for a lot of the specific tips you want, I feel like the biggest thing you can do is have a real plan. I don’t think “cold turkey” is a plan, but sit down and figure out what a reasonable number of bottles (or amount of $$) to purchase each year is. Create a spreadsheet. Fill in projections of what you’d like in an ideal world, then start cutting things until you get down to the number.
When Sonya and I started Championship Bottle, our annual wine budget was $2400 (generally tracked monthly) for the first few years (we self-financed the winery, so the “wine budget” was pretty large in that sense) and although it’s higher now, plenty of Berserkers spend more in a couple nights than I do in a year. But having a real hard cap on spending and being very intentional created some excellent habits and has really made it easy not to go (too) overboard since that number has gone up. I also learned a few lessons:
Buy What You Drink This is probably the big lesson. There are regions/grapes/producers that you think you’re really into. And maybe you are, in an intellectual sense, or even in a hedonistic sense. But if they don’t fit your drinking patterns, they aren’t wines you should buy. There are a finite number of bottles you’re going to consume in a year, and what you open is dictated by plenty of factors that should inform your buying. For example: My wife is pescatarian, so we don’t really have many reasons to open Cabernet on a daily or weekly basis (especially in a pre-Impossible age). Hell, even if she wasn’t I can’t imagine how often I’d be sitting down to steak. I go to the farmers’ market every week, and I cook really seasonally–and my happiness is far more impacted by the decision of “what am I cooking tonight” than “which wine am I going to drink.” There’s almost always a wine that’s going to pair nicely with the food that’s both delicious and intellectually intriguing. You say you go through a ton of Chianti and Chablis, perhaps that’s what you should buy (and/or things that work like those wines at the table). Also, some wines are, by their nature, special occasion bottles in your mind. Maybe they’re wines that demand your full attention, or maybe the price/rarity factor is enough that they don’t feel right for a normal dinner. Either way, how many special occasions do you have every year? Tailor your buying accordingly or start opening “special” wines more often–otherwise all they do is clog your storage and prevent you from having a more interesting (and rewarding) time on a more regular basis.
Deals Are Overrated This is practically blasphemous here, I know. And trust me, I am still a very deal-oriented shopper (if you’re the buyer for a retail shop, closeout lists can be nearly-literal gold mines), but during the very-strict-budget period I realized that often times I’d buy a bunch of bottles of a really great deal, but my purchases were exceptionally scatter shot. That meant that I wasn’t buying what I was actually drinking (see above) and those “deals” would sit in storage in place of wines that might be more exciting, or more useful, but which were priced “at normal retail.” I do think that relative value is a big part of the equation, especially for me at the time, but I think that the QPR of a wine rarely changes that much even if it’s on sale in a big way: There are a horde of $250 Napa Cabs that would be incredible buys at $50, in theory, but would bring me less pleasure than a $20 Dolcetto.
Buy from People You Like There’s too much good wine in the world to ever get a handle on it. It’s a really wonderful thing, but as a result, I realized that, all things being even somewhat equal, I’d rather buy from wineries and winemakers that I had a personal connection with. Conversely (and even more ironclad), I stopped buying any wine from assholes. When space and money was limited, I’d say “I wish we had more [Ronchi di Cialla, to use an example]” than “I’m sure glad I got this Sonoma Coast Grenache on closeout.” But maybe this doesn’t matter to you, in which case you should figure out how you’d rather prioritize ruthlessly
There’s Always More Wine, and Nothing is That Rare Cure yourself of FOMO. There will always be another incredible vintage and another new hot producer. Honestly, a lot of the wines that I’m most focused on securing every vintage aren’t on the general radar–which is why I have to buy them on release: they aren’t going to pop up at auction. Also, if you’re buying wines off a mailing list (or from a retailer) just to have access to a different wine, ask yourself how much you like the wines that you have to buy. I often think that most people would be better off just “overpaying” for the gem at auction or from a flipper rather than buying the less-fun stuff for years. Also, most things are available, either at auction, or on Commerce Corner, or (if it comes to it) at restaurants. The giant exception is when a winemaker you love retires–especially for wineries that are consumed rather than collected, because those wines don’t hit the secondary market. I wish I had more Clos Roche Blanche, Edmunds St. John, and Puffeney.
Most mailing lists and even wine clubs will let you skip a release, without losing your position, if you reach out and ask politely. (Obviously not Screaming Eagle, MacDonald etc).
So if you think you maybe want to keep buying in the future, but are trying to cut back on storage and/or cost now, just ask nicely if you can sit this release out.
That’s just one thing within the larger question posted by the OP, but I thought I’d add it.
I bought very little for about 18 months as I changed careers and took part in an unpaid internship starting in 2024.
I had two somewhat contradictory revelations.
The mailing list offers came and went and I had very little FOMO. (I was also dropped by zero lists, not that I’m on any super exclusive ones.)
I really enjoy buying wine, and I missed it.
When I started back up, I found that it was easier to skip offers or deals, and the urge to buy would basically be forgotten after about an hour if I could just ride out the initial impulse. I am also basically tapped out of home storage, so the facts on the ground are tempering my buying.
Start participating in the Cellar Reduction thread and consider, with every purchase, having to report the “failure” publicly.
For all the joking and teasing, this question gets discussed all over the board. It’s like losing weight - it’s not complicated, which doesn’t mean it’s easy, you just have to decide to do it. Or admit that you aren’t willing to do it. Either way, accept what you’ve decided.
Except for low-priced daily drinkers and recommended whites which I like more young and fresh, I stopped buying wines in the last several years that are intended for storage and aging. Prefer to wait out on my sufficient stash that I’ve started building up from vintage starting in the 90s.
Thanks mostly to generous wine groups that I’ve been fortunate enough to engage with, my taste had gravitated to preferring wines with old-aged characteristics and I have concentrated my buying to onesies or twosies of older-mature ones that happen to cross my radar and which comes in very few instances and very far in-between.
So far this year I’ve stopped buying for two weeks - three separate times! But this is not the thread for me. I’m all about reduction, but going cold turkey on buying isn’t going to be my approach (same for sending large quantities to auction). Best wishes to those who go those routes of course. As can be seen from the other thread, I’m having a much better 2026 so far than 2025 or 2024, hopefully it continues. But it will still be several years before I see much of the floor in the cellar First goal is to eliminate the need to store short-term DDs outside the cellar. That itself is probably a three-year project, but we’ll get there.
@Saul_Mutchnick has lots of good advice. Of course it depends on where you are in your wine-drinking journey. Maybe it’s more difficult to prioritize in the early days. But, once you have regions and producers that you know you love, you can focus on buying only the wines/deals/offers that fit those parameters. Unless of course you’re someone who prioritizes diversity!
More broadly, lots of these issues probably go well beyond wine. FOMO is probably a broader personality trait and not easy to just ‘cure oneself’. And then of course the question of budgeting/household finances.
I stopped buying nearly all wines, esp red wines, several years ago. I still buy some champagne to backfill as needed. It was surprisingly easy, although I can’t claim that the temptation never arises.
I will never drink all of the wine I have. Whenever I sense my finger hovering over the buy button, I just think of all the wine I currently have that needs to be drunk. Works every time.
Yes I did for a period of some years. But the driver was personal finance spasms after a divorce. I eventually solved those issues, and then got sucked back into buying with 2014 GPL EP. And the flood gates re-opened. Now, I am too old for this; I have made some difficult decisions “not to buy”, but the slope is just so slippery.
what Saul said and welcome to this thread:
. I stopped entirely for 10 years when we married.