Yes, it makes total sense. Where it falls apart for me is with storage. No basements here in Texas, so I’m split between in-home wine storage units and offsite storage, which gets prohibitively expensive. Ideal scenario for me is a passive cellar in my dream cabin somewhere in the Colorado Rockies.
I’ve been actively collecting wine for a little over 10 years. I define that as buying wine with the intention of aging it. Somewhere in there, my preferences shifted quite a bit toward the classic European regions. I’ve sold very small amounts of wine to free up cash for things like 2015 German Rieslings. I still enjoy the rest of my early purchases, even if I wouldn’t buy them again. Part of it is sentimental, I’m sure. I have friends and relatives who love big, ripe, New World wines, so I make sure to open them with those people, who probably enjoy them much more than they would a Barolo or red Burgundy anyway.
I tend to enjoy reds with quite a bit of age, so I think it makes sense to have a lot of wine, as Alan pointed out. It’s easy to find mature examples of some wines for reasonable prices, but in many cases, that is not possible, so the only feasible option for most people is to collect significant quantities. Plus, I love Riesling, Gruner, and Chenin, all of which benefit greatly for my taste from medium term aging (at least). I don’t buy as broadly as I used to, but I focus on classics and high quality. I think buying the highest quality I feel like I can afford is one of the most important things. It automatically keeps my accumulation at a fairly slow pace (much slower than it used to be, anyway), and it ensures that I’ll have some really nice wines to open in future years, even if they aren’t my favorite categories anymore.
Personally, I see no problem with 1000+ bottles, or even several times that for people who get there. In the worst case, some things can be sold off. Even if they’re sold for less than purchase prices, those losses will be minimized by focusing on high quality, and it will free up cash for whatever the person is loving at that time. I hope to drink everything I buy at some point. If I don’t, hopefully my kids will want it, or I’ll leave them with instructions for how to sell what remains.
Plan for triple in the future.
You will thank me later.
I just jumped into the aging game. Got tired of drinking stuff straight from the store/winery so started building up several wines to enjoy over the next 3-30 years. Staggered the types, mostly Rioja for my wife, but went big on the 2018 Futures, first growths all the way to the $30 ones with good ratings, and can decide in 10+ years which ones I want to drink, sell, or keep for my kids. I’ll be filling in the “gaps” with wines from K&L Auctions (since I live very close to one of their locations, no shipping charges). I don’t see an issue with 1000 either, as long as you have some sort of an aging plan and acknowledge you may end up selling some as they get closer to the drinking window.
If you think about the retirement mode, 1000 bottles is not crazy. Even 2 bottles per week takes you less than ten years to deplete the cellar. My parents are a very healthy 79 and 80, and drink wine every night. It’s their lifestyle - they introduced me to it. My parents have wines that they have cellared, but then also still buy regular, everyday wine that their enjoy for midweek dinners, and then nicer bottles for weekends and special occasions. I want their retirement.
A question I ponder from time to time, is whether I have too many special occasion wines and not enough regular wines. I’d love to be able to retire and regularly drink wines like Sociando, Lanessan, Baudry, etc., with 15+ years on them, which actually dovetails quite well with my hoarding of the 2014 vintage. By 2029, I’m 64. The question is whether I have too many of the far more expensive wines that I will not be inclined to pop regularly, saving them instead for occasions - think for example, Juges that are now tracking $400 per or some other wines that I actually paid say more than $150 for on release - haha, like that Ovid. Or, perhaps then I simply will not care, consider it a totally sunk cost from moons ago, so will pop that 2010 Vieux Chateau Certan on a Monday without a care in the world, since Monday in retirement is no different than a weekend today!
Ideally, I’d buy much more regular wines, but am just completely capped on storage. I do regret never building that home wine cellar in my house, but for the last 5+ years my wife and I have been saying we are moving, and yet here we are.
-nice position for your parents to be in . . .you will get there too
-maybe try to find more “occasions”
-you most definitely will care a lot less
-so true . . .but your pill box will remind you which day it is
Bonne route!
and
Carpe vinum!
Frank,
This happened to me too, but it was no big deal. Actually, it was great. I sold wines I had paid $29-60 for to a friend with a restaurant for $125-175/bottle. While not everything I had has increased in value, I have never been stuck with things I didn’t really like. If I ever am, I’ll donate them and hopefully get them to someone who will enjoy them and raise some money for a good cause.
Alan has it exactly right. How many bottles a year do you drink x how much age (after acquisition) do you like = needed capacity. If you can afford the storage space to store that many and the wines to fill it, your analysis is done. If not, you need to adjust accordingly. 1000 bottles is nothing if you open 3 or 4 bottles a week and like them with 30 years of cellar time. It is too much if you open one bottle a week and don’t like wines with more than 15 years on them.
1000 bottles is roughly what I have been holding at for about 6 years. I have a mix of wines meant for consumption fairly early, and wines I am aging. I have fairly eclectic tastes, and really feel this is a sweet spot for almost always having something that will pair well with what we are eating or that I/we feel like drinking, without having to drink anything too early. I do have to keep track of bottles that may be on a downward slope and put them in the queue to drink.
I am lucky to be in New England, where a passive cellar means storage space is not a concern.
Scott, since you are on cellar tracker you can get a good ball park of a desirable cellar size by looking at your consumption history by variety. If you add your preferences for aging each variety the optimal cellar size becomes a math problem. e.g. I drink 30 Cabs per year and I like them with an average age of 10 years from vintage. It follows that you should cellar~ 300 bottles of Cab. For me, since I prefer most wine aged, this equates to a cellar size of ~2000. bottles.
350 pending is pretty impressive! Just cracked 1k as well and fortunately realized early on that big bombastic wines were not for me. I still enjoy some as a guilty pleasure but have tried to focus more on mid tier wines and finding the next best thing since everything I’ve come to love has exploded in price. Best part about our hobby is that there is always someone brilliant doing something great, so it’s fun to support them on their climb up.
I passed 1000 earlier this year. It felt a bit odd: how did I get so much wine? I got over it by buying some more.
Judging from your picture, you’ve got Texas-sized boots to fill. Keep going!
I don’t understand the medical emergency part, Greg. Can you clarify?
All I was trying to say was that this happened to me as I was filling my cellar in that I realized one day had wine in it that I no longer wanted to drink, that the style had passed me by. Looking back now, I ended up selling it all off and I am glad I made that decision. I don’t want to be the wet blanket for Scott but was asking b/c of what I had been through.
The medical emergency was based on the experiences of a few acquaintances. One had thousands of bottles in an old stone cellar in France. He’d been a writer and collector for most of his life and over nearly 45 years gathered a great collection of wines that would be hard to duplicate. He had a few issues and the doctors told him to stop all alcohol. A few other guys are on meds that seem to have really affected their palates and they just don’t enjoy wine as much any more, or perhaps it’s equally psychological in that once faced with their mortality, they focus on other things more keenly.
I sincerely hope that doesn’t happen to anyone here.
But other than that, I’ve never understood the concept of shifting palates. If you like something, and with wine you’re often exposed to it as an adult who already has some experience with food and drink, why would you stop liking it when you find other things that you like as well? Does it happen with anything else? As a kid, my parents would feed us things like blue cheese. I haven’t lost a taste for it and seek out different versions whenever I can. It’s more a palate expansion than a palate shift. So a guy with 1000 bottles would seem to have some kind of understanding of his own preferences.
That’s all. No big deal. I think it’s a pain to sell bottles off as onesy-twosys, so I never do it, but to each his own! ![[cheers.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/0/0ff9bfcdb0964982cd3240b6159868fbdf215b1a.gif "cheers"){kind=small}
Greg, thanks for the reply.
Palate shift does take place, and it happened to me. There is no doubt for me. The guys I drink with around here have seen it the past 5 years, too.
I’ve just reached a place in my own wine life, my buying mentality, where I don’t want to drink stuff anymore that i don’t want to drink. Example. If I go on a business trip, and the wines are crappy, then I will drink sparkling water. Similarly, at home, at 53 and no where near the ability to process alcohol as I used to, when I open something to drink, I want to really dig it. This is the reason I sold off all the stuff I mentioned, as life’s too short to drink stuff anymore that is prompted by “might as well, as I have some of it left to finish” or something like that.
Folks around here are very fortunate to be able to own a 1,000+ bottles. A lot of fun, generosity and other privilege can take place with this kind of good fortune. Both you and Big Tex has been around here a long time, maybe one day we can meet and share some of that generosity together.
As to your first point, I’m not sure that matters to me at all. I certainly hope that I do not have any medical emergencies that impact my palate or ability to drink wine, but if something like that happens, move forward and be happy to be alive. A large part of the enjoyment is the accumulation of wine, the experience of enjoying new things and old things with good friends and family, and participating in things like this forum. While I would miss all of this, I always move forward. Don’t look back. I went on a wine hiatus years ago to do Ironman triathlon, and did 3 in the span of 2 years, including Ironman Hawaii. That was an exceptional journey for me, and I never regretted moving another passion aside for a short spell, although in retrospect, the two could have been done together, with wine in moderation. I did another Ironman in 2008 without giving up on wine, and my times were still damn competitive.
As for the palate change, I do not think you are accounting for physiological changes. I saw it happen right in front of my with my father, and remain convinced it happened to Parker as well. As my father aged, I think his palate needed more and more stimulation for the same level of appreciation. He went from enjoying balanced wine to preferring bigger wines. I think this can happen to all of us. If it happens to me, fine, I give away, trade or sell my stash.
Never regret the time we have spent here on this passion, with our friends and family. Things cannot outweigh experiences. I’ve made great, long-standing friends through wine. Like I have in other passions, hobbies and endeavors.
This is so true for me as well.
So Scott, congrats on an early and intermediate milestone!
I crossed the 1k threshold about 17 years ago and after hitting over 5k at one point, am now down to a much more manageable 3.5k 
You can always sell wine if you have too much or your tastes change. I have done this a number of times and it is very easy to do. As others have said the collecting and buying is part of the hobby.
Well OK I am currently in treatment for WAD (Wine Acquisition Disorder). Progress is being made but no sign of a cure.
Enjoy
brodie
Never regret the time we have spent here on this passion, with our friends and family. Things cannot outweigh experiences. I’ve made great, long-standing friends through wine. Like I have in other passions, hobbies and endeavors.
This. Whether your palate shifts out of gear or not! Best to all!
Is that Whitopia?
Can always build one, right?