What percentage of your cellar is white wine?

[Mike_Evans]

I’m at 22.1%, which is a lot lower than I expected. The average vintage per CT is 2005.2, which doesn’t surprise me. At some point I need to do a mass cull of all of my older white Burgs and Loires where the color is questionable just to clear the space.

[Howard_Cooper]

@Jeff Leve

Wow, am I the only red wine cellar on here? Or just the only person wiling to admit it? Perhaps 2.5% to not quite 3% is white wine.

Admit it??? What are you thinking??? That people on this board are embarrassed to have red wine.

[Howard_Cooper]

@Sarah Kirschbaum

I’m surprised more people aren’t closer to an even split.

I love white wines and drink a bunch of them. But, esp. with premox, I tend to hold them less long that I do red wines. For example, I generally have not touched by 2005 red Burgundies but am just about done with my 2005 white Burgs (still have a lot of 2005 German rieslings, however). I am surprised that you would need a 50-50% split. Would that mean you are drinking 75% whites, that you are drinking a lot of young reds or that you are aging whites as long as reds?

[Sarah_Kirschbaum]

None of the above. Or rather some of each (except the drinking a lot of young red), but those are not the only logical conclusions. In my case, as I mentioned in an earlier post, we tend to buy things we reach for most often in large quantities, which skews our stats in that direction. We entertain often as well, and might go through 6-7 bottles of champagne in one evening when we have a party, so we need quantity on hand.

That said, we definitely age some whites for quite a while, particularly Riesling and champagne. I’ve been collecting 12 years, which isn’t anything like too long to hold those whites. I guess I can’t say for sure about ultimate hold times for reds versus whites until I get there. And, in thinking about it, we generally buy our daily drinker reds in smaller quantities and refill more often locally, whereas we buy a lot of champagne in Europe, so want to do fewer shipments. I suppose it could vary substantially depending on when you took the measurement.

According to CT, in the warmer months, we drink about 45% white, 30% rose (including rose champagne), and 25% red - so yes, that would be 75% non-red. But in fall and winter, the rose drops a lot and red comes up quite a bit, bringing consumption to about 43% white, 42% red, 15% rose.

[Rauno_E_NZ]

Between 55-58% white. It helps when you have 180 bottles from one white producer !

[A_S_K_R_O_B_A_C_K]

@R@y.Tupp@+sch

77% of which 96% is Champagne.

50 percent of which is 1969 Dom?

[maureen_nelson]

@Sarah Kirschbaum

I’m surprised more people aren’t closer to an even split. I’ve always thought it was a bit odd that the first question I get asked when I meet new people who learn I am a wine lover is “do you like white or red?” The ubiquity of the question has always puzzled me a bit, and I’ve always sort of thought it must simply be the ignorance of the wine-oblivious masses that makes them even ask such a question - why would you choose one or the other when you can have both? But this thread shows a LOT more wine geeks than I would have guessed skew heavily in one direction or another.

It makes me wonder about the food choices of those who drink primarily red wine or primarily white wine. Good food/wine pairings are central to how we think about dining and drinking in my house. We have a very varied palate for food and wine. It makes me wonder if those whose wine choices skew heavily one way also find their food choices skewing heavily? Or am I just too limited in my thinking about what works in the pairing department?

Sarah, I agree. When I meet people who say they only drink red I think “how ignorant” and when they say they don’t like white I think “all that bad KJ chardonnay is not representative of white wine.”

Most of my wine drinking is at dinner parties and i believe in starting with whites (or rose) thru the first course and then onto reds then finishing with whites again for cheese or with r.s. and dessert.

My cellar is approx 57/43 red to white by mere number of bottles but i buy lots of sweet wine in half bottles. So if you go by 750 ml equivalent it is more like 61/39 red to white. Most of the white is German, French and Austrian riesling, then waaay behind is chardonnay and chenin tied (but that’s due to a combo of summer chenin consumption coupled with 2014 chablis buying).

[Craig_G]

@Alan Rath

I can understand people drinking more red than white, but it’s hard to imagine why someone would think having a cellar with less than 10% white is a good thing. You need to get more adventurous!

One reason for this is that you can reasonably treat whites like reds and cellar them for a long time or you can DYA, and it’s not as obvious that the former is better. You can serve a really good aged red Bordeaux or Burgundy to most people and they will love it, but the same is often not true of (well) aged dry whites. I find serving aged whites more like serving 50-year-old reds, where a lot of people who otherwise like good wine will not particularly like them. I’m particularly sensitive to this because my wife is about 90% sure not to like any aged white while she loves young ones. She hates Riesling equally young or old, though!

[Alan_Rath]

@Craig G

One reason for this is that you can reasonably treat whites like reds and cellar them for a long time or you can DYA, and it’s not as obvious that the former is better. You can serve a really good aged red Bordeaux or Burgundy to most people and they will love it, but the same is often not true of (well) aged dry whites.

It’s a good point. Really, I think about it more in terms of what I drink on a daily basis, not as much what’s in the “cellar”. Looking at my CT notes, it comes up about 35% white, but I know we drink more whites that I never write up, so I think 50-60% or even higher is what we actually drink. But you’re right, a lot of that is ongoing purchase, not long cellared bottles. OTOH, there are enough whites that age reasonably (i.e., 10 years or more) that I have a pretty good chunk of them stashed away. That includes Riesling (mostly Austrian), Sauvignon Blanc, Burgundy of course, Chenin Blanc, some white Rhones, other misc.

[Craig_G]

My number is very different for what we drink - probably around 50% white or a bit less. I usually have a bottle of white Burg or something else reasonably crisp open as my wife and I both prefer it as an aperitif. A couple years ago my cellar was probably only 5% dry white but I’ve really stepped up my Champagne and white Burg purchases. Before that my whites were pretty much limited to Trimbach CFE and a couple Savennieres producers. Oh, and oxidized Ch. de Beaucastel.

[H_Wallace_Jr]

My cellar is probably 40% white- But consumption is about 80% white (keeping the cellar % of white lower than red).

[dsGriswold]

5% cellared, but probably 50% consumed. I age a few Riesling and stickies but most whites and rose are bought for consumption. My wife is strictly white/rose and friends are 50/50. I am going to start buying more OR Chard this year and stash a few away.