This is something I’ve thought about before, but it really hit home today after I noticed my Copain bottle count… with todays purchase of 6 bottles my count is now 76!!. I know some will say “well you don’t have to purchase every wine” this is true, but also hard to avoid sometimes. After going through my CT list for Copain I count 10 different SVD Syrahs ( Tous and Voisins would make 12) and 7 SVD Pinots ( Tous and Voisins) make 9.
I’m just wondering out loud if I’m the only one here who has this problem and if not what do you do or did you do about it. Logical thinking says pick just a couple wines that you like each year and just buy those, which is easier said than done. I personally feel 4 to 6 wines are plenty for one winery to produce and am finding myself more interested purchasing from someone who has maybe 2 reds and 2 whites per year.
Not sure it is a problem, I try to keep upwards of 10-15 cases of wine from some producers as I do like to give some vineyard specific wines a bit of age. It does occasionally worry me that I have to on average drink a bottle a week for a steady state, but after each bottle I generally worry less.
Great question. If resources and storage space is not a limit I would buy all of producers I really like. Given a limitation on both I have preferred to cut down on selections per producer rather than on cutting producers all together. It become more difficult now given openings in lists that had been closed forever.
Good question. I tend to think that it’s generally not an issue if you really like a producer, but you have to be careful. In an effort to build some verticals of Lynch-Bages, Pavie and Figeac, I’ve accumulated about 250 bottles by buying cases or 1/2 cases. More than I really want or need from these three producers.
I have the same problem with Bedrock. I have 26 different Bedrock wines, not counting multiple vintages, of the 82 Bottles I have. I like it when it comes to picking one of Morgans wines but hate it when it comes to ordering.
Heh. You guys have not even scratched the surface. Talk to Jean-Francois Ganevat. I think that he produces something like 30-40 different bottlings. Not all are imported into the U.S. and, of course, many are made in very small amounts.
Theoretically, I don’t think there is any number that is too much. As long as they’re good wines, and not all very similar to each other then I don’t see the harm.
Some examples in my cellar that show both sides of the coin:
Arcadian: own twelve different bottlings; 9 of them are regular purchases; there is one bottling I avoid b/c it’s not a style I prefer.
Tablas Creek: own four different bottlings, and usually own some of one other to bring that total up to five; they make – I don’t know – maybe 15 (or more?) different bottlings; I simply stick to the ones that I think are worthy of buying
JJ Prum: own 6, 4 of which are reg. purchases; they bottle many more; basically, I’ve simply chosen a couple to examine over time, vintage to vintage.
For some wineries, money certainly becomes a deciding factor in choosing to not buy across their entire spectrum of bottlings; when that happens, I try to pick the bottlings that I prefer, and simply buy those year and year out, to the exclusion of the others.
So, I guess what I’m saying is that there really isn’t a right or wrong way to handle this situation — just do what feels best for you; for me, that is avoiding (1) multiple bottlings that taste the same, and (2) bottlings that aren’t subjectively worth buying (standing on their own).
Jadot makes at least 80 wines, probably more. I love them, but just focus on a few that are favorites. The more wines a winery produces, the more options you have, in terms of pricing, vineyards, etc. Just don’t buy everything, focus on what excites you.
I’ve had to do this with Rhys, used to buy everything but now have to be more selective.
Bedrock was one of the first that came to mind Brian. I can totally understand the draw of working with new vineyards or even experimenting from a winemakers stance, but damn it can be frustrating as a consumer.
I think three or four is about right. Beyond that it starts getting to be too much and I seem to lose interest.
With some of these offerings out there you need to spend $500 just to figure out which one or two designates really interest you. With Cabernet, it stays relatively simple so good for me.
Brian G and Robert, choosing only to build on existing verticals has been my buying pattern in the past, but there are quite a few enablers around here that can throw a wrench in that system.
I wrote about this in regards to the Williams Selyem mailer on my blog.
It becomes problematic with that many offerings. Last night we had our last and only bottle of 06 Carlisle Bacchi Ranch. Delicious wine and I wish I had bought more but typically with Carlisle I buy breadth and not depth.
For me 8-10 to plenty. First Winery that came to mind,when the question was asked, was Sineann. I’ve seen them push out near 30 different wines in one year with multiples in each variety! Some can be quite good, others can be NOT! They would be a lot better off, imo, if they made a hell of a lot less bottlings and concentrate on making really great wine on the varieties that are left.
Looks like my max is 16 different bottlings from one winery, and they make more than 20 different ones. I couldn’t imagine doing without a single one of those and most are SVD.
I had that experience visiting Sineann several years back – I think I tried 25 wines in a row, and none of them was bad, but there was a lot of average wine that didn’t seem distinguished enough to be worth having been made into yet another SVD.
To the overall point, I realize that you don’t have to buy any more bottlings than you want (assuming it’s not a bundled deal), but to me personally, somewhere after a 6-8 or so**, I find it to become a negative. Trying to choose which ones you will like, fretting that the ones you didn’t buy might have been the best ones, spreading out too thin and only getting one or two bottles of each, trying to decide when you go to drink one which of all the ones you have is the one that’s ready to drink now . . .
I like producers like Dehlinger that make a few high-quality wines, you can order them in larger quantity without spending thousands of dollars and fretting about all the SVDs you didn’t buy, you get allocated plenty of what you want, and there is less brain damage. It’s like dining at a restaurant that has a one-page menu but everything on it is excellent.
** The number does vary, of course, depending on (a) how high the quality of the wines is, (b) how distinctive the different bottlings are from each other and how much the individual sites really deserve to be bottled as SVDs, (c) how many different varietals the winery makes (the more varietals, I think the higher the number of wines they can make before it becomes annoying – for example, I don’t find it to be as tedious looking at 2 zins, 2 syrahs, 2 grenaches, a sauvignon blanc, a rose and chardonnay, as compared to 9 different SVD California syrahs), and (d) how expensive the wines are.
** The number does vary, of course, depending on (a) how high the quality of the wines is, (b) how distinctive the different bottlings are from each other and how much the individual sites really deserve to be bottled as SVDs, (c) how many different varietals the winery makes (the more varietals, I think the higher the number of wines they can make before it becomes annoying – for example, I don’t find it to be as tedious looking at 2 zins, 2 syrahs, 2 grenaches, a sauvignon blanc, a rose and chardonnay, as compared to 9 different SVD California syrahs), and (d) how expensive the wines are.
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