What constitutes a 'big' cellar? (quantity of bottles)

[todd_waldmann]

@Sarah Kirschbaum

It so isn’t about need!

I’ve said before on this board that many of us derive pleasure from the buying, the storing, the organizing, the sorting, the viewing, and yes, just the having. I know I do. I don’t much care if I have more than I’ll ever drink. Most of my wine is age worthy and if my stepson doesn’t care about wine, someone else who survives us will.

Those who don’t collect (and I’m willing to admit I’m a collector as well as a drinker) will never get it. For instance, I think one baseball card is more than anyone needs…

This nails it for me. I have more than I could possibly ever need but I still love the process.

[AndrewH]

@Pmenkes

went to an xmas party at which I was told they had chilled 700 bottles of Champagne.

Just you and 2,000 of your closest friends?

No . . . that’s what’s remarkable. Private house . . . large but not immense. Hard to gauge numbers as people come and go, but probably 200 was most at one time. It probably wasn’t all drunk, but I can believe half of it was at least . . . it was flowing!

[Robert.A.Jr]

@Neal.Mollen

@Robert Alfert

Just to show Jeb he ain’t all that, this is my office on Friday while the Chairman was walking around for compensation reviews. . . . At least I had something for him to drink, while standing.

And the dogs don’t care.

So the two grey rectangles on their ends by the wall . . . Lebanese Blonde?

LOL, I don’t even know what that means!

[Robert.A.Jr]

@Jeff Vaughan

Love the pic of the goldens! Now that ours is a young adult, my wife has been hounding me for another. Maybe, if I can move up to a large cellar - 2500 bottles.

Jeff, the second has been a dream! They love all over each other. Buster is 9 years old and the puppy is 4 months. We have a shelter dog too that is 17, and still kicking!

[Jason_T]

@Doug Schulman

@Phil M

At least 3x the number of bottles I have in hand and on order

Haha, you beat me to it. It’s like the common consumer perception that wines costing less than they generally spend are crap and wines costing more than they generally spend are overpriced.

Hah, indeed. I picked 2500 bottles. Why? Because I’m normally around 330-350 in my collection. 3x that is 1000. That didn’t seem that big, and the next number up was 2500. So, 2500.

[Pat_Martin]

@Bob Hughes

And I do think that your consumption pattern plays a big part in how big your cellar should or could be.

Two other factors that come into play are how much you value provenance and what you typically buy and drink. Again, for me, I like Italian wines and believe provenance is key, so I don’t have as much of an interest in buying older vintages at auction. As a result, I’ve had to lay down a lot of Barolo and Brunello because the stuff takes time to come around.

OTOH, if your tastes run to mailing list Pinot Noirs from California, you probably don’t need as large of a cellar because you are in effect reloading every year with the next offer.

This, all of it.

My cellar is 2500 bottles and has held steady around that number of 5 years or so. Between tastings, dinner at home, gifts, corked bottles, the occasional batch I sell where my tastes have changed, I go through ~200 bottles a year (basically half a bottle a day), which gives me about 12 years of wine if I stopped buying tomorrow (that’s the plan!). Factoring in my age (mid-40’s), that red Bordeaux is my mainstay, and that I most enjoy red wine that is fully mature, I need a good stash to ride off into the sunset with…

But sometimes I suspect much of this is a post-hoc rationalization and I stopped at ~2500 bottles because my cellar is ridiculously full at that number.

[R_Roberts]

@Robert Alfert

@Neal.Mollen

So the two grey rectangles on their ends by the wall . . . Lebanese Blonde?

LOL, I don’t even know what that means!

Bricks of hashish.

[GregT]

Same here. But as others mentioned, a lot of it has to do with your consumption. If you only drink on weekends, then 100 bottles is a lot, but I have wine every day and when people would come over want something to pour for them so 100 bottles would be gone in a few months. But then there’s the whole point of having a cellar - I don’t want to replenish things from mailing lists every year. That way you end up only drinking young wine. I don’t care about the sorting, etc., which is frankly just a chore. It’s more important to have a wine that’s been sitting quietly for many years or that simply fits the mood I have tonight.

When I had a lot of space, it didn’t really matter so much and I ended up accidentally aging wine that I’d never intended to keep. Lacking that space these days, I’m thinking it’s time to drink through some stuff.