Stuff is stacked in 12 bottle lay down boxes in a professional storage facility.
95% is from Côte-d’Or.
The bottles are arranged in the boxes by producer, vintage and village/vinyard. Boxes are stacked with stuff from the southernmost part of the Côte on the bottom and stuff from the northernmost part at the top, basically in this order from to to bottom:
In addition to making it easy to browse when I don’t feel like opening CellarTracker, keeping the cellar organized satisfies some mild obsessive tendencies. Perhaps most importantly, it contributes to domestic tranquility by giving me the opportunity to exercise sole control over a household fiefdom. Unlike, say, how the dishwasher is loaded or where things are stored in the kitchen.
Variety, producer, vintage for the most part. Creates a lot of fine-tuning and re-organizing during heavy shipments in the spring and fall but opening a bottle, putting on some music and shuffling bottles around isn’t the worst way to spend an hour or two.
The best thing we did was create a section (about 75 bottles, organized by variety) for my wife who was always unsure what bottles were ‘safe’ to drink. She likes to say it’s the ‘cheap section’, and while the majority of the wines in there are less expensive, I also put in whatever I think is ready to drink. Some she knows are pricey but often doesn’t know if she’s grabbing a $30 wine or a $130 wine.
Creates some great high-low pairings. Expensive Bordeaux with thrown together sloppy joes on a Tuesday night? Delicious and a great reminder that this stuff is meant to be drank and enjoyed vs always waiting for the right meal or occasion
Home cellar. Mostly by region, within region oldest to youngest, within that (if necessary, e.g., German riesling) by producer. White burgundy is separate from red burgundy, however. Most of my racking is double deep, so if I have an odd number of a particular wine, I endeavor to pair the spare with a spare from same producer. So my cellar is set up as German riesling, domestic pinot, bordeaux (red then sauternes), Austrian riesling, white burgundy (including Chablis), Loire white, Italian, Alsace, then a wall of red Burg. I do have racking for champagne/magnums in two different spots. Periodically, I attack a section where I have pulled and drunk bottles, and move remaining bottles around to fill in empty slots and make room for new acquisitions (fewer and fewer of those). I have a table in middle of space with racking underneath and various singletons are racked there but not a lot of rhyme or reason.
Oh, and I have a separate section (above my wall of burgundy) for half bottles because I learned with my first cellar that using racking that holds a 750 for a 375 is a big waste of real estate.
My collection just hit 500 bottles this year. Mostly Burgundy and Willamette Chardonnay, but all offsite. My home cellar is a small 24 bottle wine fridge that is designed for Bordeaux bottles so it’s really more like 12 bottles.
Let’s just say Lee over at Seattle Wine Storage knows me better than he should. I’m hoping to get a 200 bottle EuroCave this year to house some of my less valuable stuff at home.
Yay. Congrats on the 500 mark. How long do you think that’ll last? We slowed our drinking down to a crawl compared to what it was and now are accumulating faster than consuming
Different aspects of the hobby are associated with different degrees of work vs. leisure.
Acquisition used to be as much work as fun until I figured out what I liked and where to get it. Now 90% fun, 10% work.
Storage and organization are indeed work. CT lightens the load, and as noted above there are secondary gains.
Disposition is all fun and leisure and where I spend most of my time on the hobby. Unless I’m sending stuff off to auction, which happens every 10 years or so. That’s work.
Nearing 500 bottles over here. I usually expect to reorganize a couple of times a year. You’ve got me going back at it next weekend. So thanks for that.
Yeah, we have something kind of similar (albeit smaller). The two columns closest to the door are the “open anytime without concern” wines and I try to keep it stocked with a variety of stuff. It’s not organized, but it’s not that many bottles and it’s pretty easy to just visually browse them to find what you want.
For the put-it-in-any-slot folks, do you do that even if you have a case of something? It would make me crazy to spead 12 of the same wine all over the cellar!