Post your wine cellar mistakes

WINE TALK
41

Meh.

Gots to have good grammer to get my dollars these days.

42

“Oh ye of little Faith, why are ye so afraid to get out thine Amex?”

43

Most of my mistakes have been consumed. I was member of a Spanish conversation group where my plonk was a step up. [wink.gif]

44

Ah to live and learn. My biggest regret was not having a stable living situation for 15 years out of college. Could not store all those cases of '82 Bdx I bought from my employer. So many great wines I didn’t understand I poured down the gullets of friends who had no clue. But it was a learning experience.

Now, it’s hostage to winery lists. If I buy, say, a case of KB appellation pinots each year, I have to drink one month to keep room in the cellar. But then I’d buy a case of the vineyard designates or more. That’s 2.5 bottles of KB a month. If I hold myself to 5 lists, that is a case a month, or a bottle or two each weekend night. In perpetuity. Without any variation. It just wasn’t sustainable. And if you only buy a case of wine from a winery, you’re still just about lowest on the totem pole. It was hard, but if a winery drops me, I don’t feel the pain anymore.

When I used cellar tracker to see what I was actually drinking, I was much better prepared to stock the cellar. It’s shifted strategically to champagne and high end whites, and California reds that age. That way, if I don’t drink a vintage champagne to keep up with turning the cellar over, I can at least age it another year without guilt.

45

Isn’t this a lot like one of the lower rungs of Hell for a wine drinker? After all, our torments to come will involve what we love most in this life.

46

My biggest cellar mistake was not buying enough sweet wines. [wow.gif]

Ha, kidding. In order of commission, they are:

  • Not realizing I was going to end up with a wine collection/cellar in the first place. I’ve written before how my first wine purchase ever consisted of 7 bottles of icewine off of a wine tour and I figured that would be enough.

  • Not buying more than one bottle of a wine. Fellow Berserker Mike Grammer explained to me that the logic behind buying at least 2 bottles of a wine I want is that if it sucks, I can always exchange it and if I like it I got another bottle before it sold out. Made so much sense I wondered why I didn’t get in the habit sooner.

  • Buying more than one bottle of a wine. Once this barrier was broken thanks to the above, I was doomed. My collection would be literally half the size that it is now and much more manageable. I have actually gone back to single purchases because of this.

  • Not realizing that travel by extension would be a necessary component of my life as a wine lover and therefore not preparing properly to do it time or budget-wise for the last 4 years.

  • Not diversifying into drier types of wines sooner. Although one could argue this is a good thing as it would double the issues I currently have, I should have developed the appreciation I have now for Pinot Noir, Cabernet Sauvignon, Amarone, Chateau Montelena, Pearl Morisette, Chateauneuf du Pape Blanc and dry Riesling way, way sooner.

  • Not stealing from Mike Grammer’s cellar/collection despite multiple opportunities to do so neener

47

Not buying enough champagne!!!

48

Note enough whites and Champagnes
Not consistently putting young wines that need age in the back.

49

These are all good lessons, notwithstanding that some people’s experiences are different in one or two respects.

Another one for me is not enough oversized racking - so many 750 ml bottles are made (sparklers, Turley, Burgs, others) that don’t fit regular racking.

#1 is a mixed thing, though. Almost everyone who buys a wine cabinet realizes quickly he got one too small. But at the same time, if I could hold 2,000 bottles in refrigerated storage, I’d probably have 2,200 bottles by now, so to some extent, the lack of space - imperfectly and clutteredly - imposes some restraint on your excess.

It frustrates the hell out of me how poorly made wine cabinets are. You can buy a $250 refrigerator and run it for 25 years without a repair, but you spend $8K on a top of the line wine cabinet, and you’re undergoing expensive repairs and replacement multiple times in the first decade. I still have yet to have anyone tell my why wine cabinets are so dramatically much more fragile than refrigerators.

I’ll add another thing - I never realized how hard it is to find anyone to repair a faulty wine cabinet. I live in a very populous area, surrounded by a lot of wealthy folks, and with the ability to ask on WB and among local wine collectors for referrals, and yet I can barely find anyone willing to come repair my wine cabinet. I’ve basically been able to find one single guy over the years, and he quite happily might take a month or more to even call me back. Your AC repair guys generally won’t work on them, in my experience.

50

Not realizing another cellar would be needed just for Carlisle and Bedrock.

51

Yup, gotta go split, rock-solid reliable. I’m guessing the reason is that the split systems are used for a lot more things than wine cellars and thus are made in much greater quantities, and thus have a lot more investment/manufacturing experience behind them.

52

My most regrettable wine collecting mistake (other than not buying jRousseau by the case) was that I did not taste every wine upon purchase. I stretched to buy upper level wines in most cases, and thus usually bought 3 at a time, and thought they were too precious to commit infanticide and crack a bottle upon purchase. Although I am grateful to have a cellar full of mature and maturing excellent wines, I lost the opportunity to taste them upon release and learn as I followed the wine over the years.

53

I would buy just a few expensive WA reds(for me at least)and let them age while drinking the more affordable ones. Now my palate has changed and I do not want to drink the good stuff. On the positive, I will have some well aged wines down the road if my palate changes back to liking fruity reds that have lost their fruit.

54

Still waiting for delivery of the 2012’s… Reminds me of another regret. Don’t bother to buy futures. Wait til the wine is in a bottle, drink it, then decide if it is worth the investment.

55

No proper insulation.

56

But how is the tech for split systems better developed than that for through-the-wall units. In both cases they’re premised on an air conditioner (window vs. whole house). Both of those have been around for years, and both need tweaks to have lower temps and not remove as much humidity. How do the split guys make that adjustment reliably but not the TTW guys?

57

“But how is the tech for split systems better developed than that for through-the-wall units. In both cases they’re premised on an air conditioner (window vs. whole house). Both of those have been around for years, and both need tweaks to have lower temps and not remove as much humidity. How do the split guys make that adjustment reliably but not the TTW guys?”

Although I suppose there are split systems made by the single unit guys seen in those mailers, my split system is a commercial one, as are probably most of the ones owned by people here who have splits. Smaller commercial units for my size of cellar, but commercial nonetheless, and apparently built to last and more reliable, and they are perhaps more amenable to being serviced and maintained.

58

If you really want precise control of the temperature and humidity in your cellar for a long time, pony up and buy the real deal:

http://www.emersonnetworkpower.com/en-US/Products/PrecisionCooling/SmallRoomCooling/Pages/LiebertChallenger3000withiCOMPrecisionCoolingSystem105and175kW.aspx

These are considered a Cadillac of the data center world where temp/hum control are even more important, and they are built to run continuously for 15 years or better.

You will have to run a cold water tap to the humidifier though, and a drain line to the condensate pump.

59

Is that a Yogi Berra quote?

60

I don’t have major regrets but a few minor ones

  • I should have restricted myself earlier to buying 2-4 bottles of a wine instead of a case.
  • I built big enough but since I like to organize by type, I should have left more room between sections, for example, my champagne section is cutting into my burgundy, so I need to bulk relocate pretty much every shipping season. Annoying, but not terrible.
  • Like many have listed above, I should have planned better for oversize bottles such as champagne, mags and German Riesling baseball bat magnums.