Starting a family cellar

[paul_hanna]

@brodie thomson

@alan weinberg

wish you had posted this decades ago and convinced my dad to start a cellar.
alan

I completely agree with Alan’s sentiment but…

The 1960’s in New Zealand was a wine wasteland. If my Dad had started a wine cellar in the early 1960’s when I was a “wee bairn” then he would have been cellaring NZ Govt Dept of Agriculture experimental wines. These wines were made by civil servants to demonstrate that wine grapes could be grown in commercial quantities in traditional farming areas (i.e flat land with high fertility soils). By all accounts the wines were foul beyond any measure and made by chemists and such like without any wine making experience.

So Dad - thank you for not leaving me a wine cellar!

Brodie

Could have bought all that great Aussie stuff from the 60’s though…

A case of Bin 60a = a lot of $$$$'s…

[Paul_F_a_r_a_c_i]

@alan weinberg

wish you had posted this decades ago and convinced my dad to start a cellar.
alan

Alan, this post makes me grateful for my experience. My dad bought well for years, many great ageworthy wines. It took a while, but once I became fascinated, we have had some of the best evenings enjoying well aged Bordeaux, Port, Cal Cabs, and other wines. I have even expanded his horizons with areas I’ve discovered and come to love. This can be a fascinating and fulfilling experience with family. But inheriting/bequesting is not the goal; it’s drinking mature and great wine with the people who matter to you and who will appreciate them with you.

[Mark_C_Johnson]

My son is 5. I am 55. I have many bottles of wine. I hope he enjoys wine when he is “of age”. I do purchase wine, store wine and collect wine with the anticipation that he will enjoy well matured bottles when he learns to appreciate what he has inherited. Who knows what will happen in the future. I will, however, continue to enjoy my collection until I am no longer able to. My problem is how do I ensure that he will have access to this wonderful collection should I not be around when he is old enough to inherit my wine.

[Jonathan_Loesberg]

@Cole Kendall

I am the happy purchaser of someone else’s family cellar that no one inherited. My benefactor provided me (when he moved from DC to FLA and left his wine collection behind) with a bunch of wines mostly from the 60s and 70s from stuff he obviously liked, mostly Bordeaux with a little Rhone and Burgundy, some better years and some off years, some bottles delicious and some dead. I am almost certain that when he bought his 67s (say) that he had no plan to pass them off 40 years later but those are the bottles he never got around to drinking. I did not have the pleasure of meeting him (nor drinking with him) as Kevin will have with his children but it’s been a series of fascinating discoveries.

With that in mind I think Kevin’s heirs would appreciate some of the wines that he loved and perhaps some of the wines that they shared on important or just memorable occasions. But there is something magical about older bottles even when they are not great and I would hope your sons appreciate your efforts on their behalf.

I don’t know Cole’s accidental benefactor either, but I am grateful to him, via Cole, for some special bottles of wine. That said, it will probably be the case that if you leave wine, someone, if not your family, will get the benefit. It’s of course nice to do something for your children. But one ought never be disappointed if they don’t share your particular tastes.

[Jeff_Fish]

What my wife doesn’t drink up, the kids can have. I’ve been buying wine since the late 90s and I’m not buying anything in particular to cellar for them.

[dsGriswold]

I have purchased a few wines that I probably will not drink and will last longer than I will. Mostly now the wines are 3/1 short term/long term aging. My kids and family enjoy good wine. Hopefully they will continue to check CT notes on drink ability. But if they do not, that’s beyond my control. I may rearrange the cellar to reflect aging potential instead of variety or region to make selection easier, but I have not bought anything nor plan to that will not enter it’s drinking window within 5 years.

[Faryan_Amir-Ghassemi]

Seems like a damn fine legacy, although I’m in no position to even think about kids.