I started literally with a single bottle that I bought with the intention of holding on to for a while before drinking it (I am not sure I would have even used the word “aging” then). I was in my mid twenties. Before that we were sampling and learning about “real” wine and buying different wines for immediate consumption. That single bottle was a 1968 Beaulieu Vineyard BV Georges de Latour Private Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon. Our “cellar” was the bottom of the closet, and we carried that one wine from apartment to apartment before we “settled down” and bought a house. I built a wine storage rack in the corner of my cellar (aka basement) and stored that bottle and started accumulating wine to have on hand for drinking and also setting aside some bottles both for aging (I could now use that word) and to drink for special occasions over the next few to several years. I even bought a case of birth year wines for my daughter and son (but that’s another story). We would also bring back wines from our travels. This modest pattern continued for many years. Then I found WineBerserkers a few years ago. . . and, man, that was all she wrote!
I’ve been buying wine for 20 years or so but didn’t really put together a cellar per se until 2008 or so. I moved around a lot during med school and training so didn’t buy in too much quantity until the last couple years; the cellar is probably 85% old world with a smattering of new world cab, zin etc. The Old world part is ~85% champagne/burg with a little bdx, rhone, and only a little bit of non-French wine.
I’ve become more burg/champagne focused in the last year or two but that’s been most of what I’ve drank in the last 3-5 years.
This thread has been way more “successful” than I imagined. I love reading everyone’s stories and words of wisdom. Thanks for everyone for sharing. It’s really awesome to see all of the diverging ways we have all found our way to wine and to Wineberserkers.com.
You have no idea… and to top it all of, he is the one who introduced me to wine, whisky and armagnac. The callousness of that wonderful man!
Reading through the topic, there doesn’t seem to be a lot of people who acquired their interest in wines from their parents or grand-parents. That is probably to be expected in the US and Canada where even though prior generations were drinking wine, there wasn’t a lot of interest in cellaring, collecting or treating wine as a hobby. I would be interested to compare that against folks from the Old Continent. Most of my European friends seem to have acquired their interest (and ver often taste and preferences) from their parents or grand-parents. But maybe my sample does not reflect the norm…
I got interested in wine while in graduate school. I was drinking a cheap Chianti (1999 Sensi) by the case from my local shop. When the vintage ran out and they stocked the 2000, I didn’t even like it. I couldn’t wrap my head around the concept that a vintage could taste so different. Throughout graduate school I squirreled away what little cash I had to try different wines and only got more and more interested. I bought a six pack of 2000 Le Haut-Médoc du Prieuré when I earned my PhD to have at specific points in my career along with a 12 bottle wine fridge to store them. The final bottle was supposed to be for my retirement but when I drank the fifth after I got tenure, it was apparent the last bottle wouldn’t make old bones. I opened it shortly thereafter. It was corked anyways (what a disappointment that would have been).
When I got my job and moved to Indiana, I looked into building a cellar in my basement. The guy that came out mentioned buying wine online from Wine Library. It hadn’t previously occurred to me that this was an option. I used WL and discount sites like WTSO to try wines from all over the world. Over about five years I landed on California, Bordeaux, Rioja, and Piedmont as the areas I was most interested in. I joined mailing lists that eventually became a burden that caused me to spend too much of my wine budget on a handful of wineries so I dropped them. I lost most of my interest in most new world wines.
One day, a WB member moved to Indiana and dropped me an email to meet. He opened my eyes to Riesling and Loire. He also helped me navigate Burgundy, which I’d always had trouble figuring out. He’s now a great friend.
~Twenty years after learning about vintage variety via cheap Chianti, I’ve established a collection of relatively stable size. I’ve found producers I love in each of the main regions I enjoy. Much of my money goes to buying these producers’ wines. I don’t worry about verticals and skip vintages here or there. I simply buy them because I love them. I go in phases to explore new producers in regions I enjoy or to explore entirely new regions. Some of those experiments led to a new part of my collection while others were interesting without evoking enough emotion for continued exploration.
I’ve been into wine for about five years; my mom drank almost exclusively Dubeouf Beaujolais-Nouveau growing up, so I didn’t inherit much of a palate. I had worked in restaurants for the past five years without really getting into the wine lists at the places I’d worked, and after finally deciding to spend $24 on a glass of Burgundy in a restaurant - Domaine Arlaud Roncevie Bourgogne - I finally “got” it, or was at least curious to know why this wine was so different from all the others I’d ever had. Thus began the story.
Because of my income bracket and lack of space/living in a two-bedroom apartment in a large city, I really only started building a “cellar” early last year. I bought a wine fridge in mid-2018 and quickly filled it. I’m on a pretty modest budget by this group’s standards (but an outrageous one by normal people’s), so I have to be choosy and target value and producer, but I find that to be a hugely rewarding and enjoyable part of the hobby. Unfortunately, Burgundy and Champagne hold the keys to my heart so that makes it quite difficult. I’m happy to begin slowly putting away a few bottles here and there of villages and 1er-level Burgundies to begin opening in five years or so; not a huge collection, but one where I can pull a nice bottle every 2-3 weeks would be nice.
I’m getting more into California/Oregon lately so I hope to make that a small but diverse slice of my collection.
I got a small offsite locker that holds ~75 or so bottles, and I’ve already socked 40 or so away. By my estimate, I’ll run out of space by early next year, so I’ll have to upgrade and I’m just going to get one that has ~250 or so and pay the extra for the peace of mind. Hopefully that won’t inspire me to fill it.
I hope to be drinking very well out of my own cellar in my late thirties/early forties or so. ![[cheers.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/0/0ff9bfcdb0964982cd3240b6159868fbdf215b1a.gif "cheers"){kind=small}
I started in 03-04 when I started cooking and wine seemed like a natural companion. Bordeaux was the start for me but quickly lead to Super Tuscans, Brunello, Barolo, Rhone, Burgundy, Germany and Austrian Riesling, etc. I starting with a lot of reading, going to tastings, drinking older bottles I could find. Growing up food and wine were not really a thing in our house so I was having fun researching and trying food and wine from different places. I got more serious about wine around 2008 when I moved to London for a few years. London has a great wine community and ample opportunities for offlines. I made the decision to invest in understanding as many of the benchmark producers and vintages from the majors regions as I could. I probably averaged 2-3 wine lunches or dinners a week featuring themes like a Rousseau Chambertin vertical, 82 Bordeaux, Rayas vert, DRC, Giacosa, Krug, Salon and on and on. It was an amazing education and as most find out with this hobby, you meet some great people along the way that is more fun and rewarding than the actual wine. Also visited and tasted in Bordeaux, Tuscany, Champagne, Rhône Valley and Rioja which was another great way to better understand the regions and make some connections with individual produces that we still talk about. After moving back home to CA and starting a family, my main focus and passion went back to cooking for family and friends. After all of my wine explorations I realized what made me the most happy was that combination of wine and food and the magic they can make together. So pretty much from the start of actually building a cellar I have alway thought about what I like to cook/eat first and then building a cellar to compliment that. As we have gotten older we have tended to eat a little lighter so more fish and veg so we consume a lot more whites than reds, probably 70/30. Food friendly whites like Riesling, Gruner, Chablis, White Burg, Muscadet, Sancerre and the likes are in heavy rotation for us. My wife has very similar tastes in food and wine and its just built into both of our lifestyles at this point.
Advice for building a cellar is take the time to figure out what you like and what is important to you about wine before you start buying heavy. I know plenty on people that bought 500 bottles of Aussie Shiraz before they realized their one true love was champagne. And as others have said, what is important to you is how you should shape you cellar. Are you a trophy hunter, is your wine just for offlines, investment, daily drinking, food pairings? There is no wrong answer and it may be a combo but it’s important to figure that out to concentrate your dollars on what matters most for your ultimate enjoyment.
Another thing is don’t fall into the trap of saving that bottle for the “right time” or only on the weekends. I have never understood that. Except for a few anniversary year wines I have stashed, the rest of the cellar is open for business any night of the week. Grilled a Flannery ribeye on a Tuesday recently and opened a 90 Sassicaia. Ordered a tin of caviar that showed up on a Thursday so opened a 96 Krug. Made for a good Tuesday and Thursday. Why wait!
Last is don’t dismiss inexpensive wines, especially if you care at all about food and wine as a pair. There is some much great wine out there that is fun to DRINK! At the end of the day, at least for me, this hobby is about enjoyment and I get just as much enjoyment out of my Riesling with tonkatsu as I do with my Barolo and a steak. I recently picked up some beautiful oysters and raced them home and opened my favorite $19 muscadat and it just hit the spot. Someone could have walked into the house with bottle of La Tache and I would have said come back when I’m roasting a duck, I’m perfectly happy right now.
You can buy cellars to drink, or cellars to impress. Mine happened organically and over time. Due to cost considerations, I couldn’t buy many wines I wanted in quantity so it was done piecemeal but always with the goal of educating myself through time so I have learned a lot through the process. I think I am challenged by the intellectual curiosity of it than simple hedonism, even though I would seek out wines that taste good.
You will never have enough bottles in any cellar, and yet you may still find you have more wine than you ever know what to do with. This is the crazy paradox of cellaring wine.
I think it depends where your families came from in Europe, too. Not a lot of wine made in Eastern Europe, for instance.
True. I was probably too broad in my statement. I should have replaced Europe by: France, Belgium, Italy, Bulgaria, Spain, Germany and Austria since that is my actual empirical sample. Mind you, some of my European friends that acquired their interest or taste in wines from their parents or grand-parents were not necessarily focused on the wines produced locally. I have an Italian friend who grew up a household where it was all about Burgundy and a Bulgarian friend whose dad was a major Sancerre lover!
I haven’t had time to chime in here. But my stepdad (since I was 9) is from Hungary like my mom. His mother’s family were growers and winemakers in Kecskemét before WWII, and later the communist government seized their family property. When I was a child, she used to make Palinka (Hungarian brandy) and wine in very small quantities in her apartment in Brooklyn. But despite this history we did not grow up with wine, either collecting or at the table for dinner on a regular basis. I came to it independently in my late 20s.
Started my adventures in wine in the late 70s. Finally put a cellar in my home around 2006, at one point it was full (4500 bottles) and another 3000 bottles in storage in California. Fast forward to 2015 and a decision was made to send the majority to sell, primarily auction , as my wife very rarely drinks and I was not able to drink due to cancer scare. Kept around 800 bottles, now only 500 left. Primarily White GC Burgs. My son and daughter have a great palates, which I truly enjoy having a glass of wine with them at dinner when home.
Here are many things I learned:
- Try what you buy.
- Buy quality.
- Don’t be afraid to sell.
- Young wines that are not good do not get better.
- Tastes change over time.
- Only need to be on a few mailing lists, as the majority of wines I truly enjoy, do not have mailing lists.
- You will enjoy wine more when sharing with friends. When we have people over for dinner, they usually leave with a bottle from my cellar.
in my parents china closet in the 80’s
I started paying attention as my business career led me to more expensive dinners where wine was frequently a topic during the course of the evening. So I started learning more to not seem the fool.
Tasting more good wine opened up my eyes as well to how good wine could be. I was hooked. Then I started buying stupid amounts of everything before I even knew what I liked. Sad case of “if I own a lot of wine I must be really knowledgeable” derr. Big mistake. Ended up selling off a shit-ton of wine I owned that I found out I wasn’t really interested in drinking. Now I mostly buy to store what I like and keep buying lots of single bottles of things I am interested in finding out about.