How Do You Control What You Spend?

This month we took a trip to Napa and Sonoma and bought from NINE wineries.
Then last week I bought from the Outpost and Rivers-Marie releases. And some of the Carlisle too.
Today, I bought heavily from the Maybach release, our favorite wine.
And then, Berserker Day on Friday will be a heavy spend.
Of course, Mike Smith’s Syrah’s and Semillons come out today, and Littorai releases today as well.
This means I’ve already bought from 14 wineries this month, BEFORE Berserker day, where I expect at least six more. Probably more.
I’m avoiding looking at my CT for actual total $$ spent.

I know January is a brutal month for releases, and we should have planned our trip better, and it DOES settle down after this. But, the fact is, many wineries will have many more releases throughout the year.

What do you do? How do you control your wine spending? I’ve never set a budget on wine, but perhaps it’s time? Or perhaps I’ll simply feel better in 45 days, after the credit cards are paid off…

Simple answer- I don’t buy everything I am offered.
You don’t need to buy from 14 winery offers.

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Well, nine of the 14 were because we were IN the wineries, but your point remains: don’t buy from every damn winery we visit. Problem is, it’s fun, and a great memory, and the wines are really good!

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Is there still room on your credit card? If there is, I don’t see the problem.

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Wines always taste “better” at the winery. It’s OK not to buy something, particularly if it’s an established tasting room, and not a small producer-host. Can’t tell you how many bottles of wine over the years I opened and asked myself “why did I buy this”.

Everyone has their personal limits (and finances). Myself, I buy almost nothing (particularly from California producers) over $100. It’s a rare purchase that exceeds that limit, and then not by much. Multiple bottles, multiple times, at $150+/bottle adds up very fast. And there is so much good wine out there from great people who don’t charge that.

I do have the advantage that we can drive up to Napa or Sonoma any time we want for a day trip, so you get little bit of a pass for being in half way across the country [cheers.gif] But be very careful about signing up for clubs and automatic shipments. That will kill your budget, and load you up with a bunch of wines you don’t necessarily want over the long term.

Ultimately, you’re the customer, you can’t be shy about buying selectively.

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Glibly - when I am out of money, I stop buying.

A little more reasoned answer…
Map your purchasing to your consumption. If you drink a bottle of Port per year, don’t buy cases. If you drink 10 cases of Champagne a year, then it is likely more of a budgeting problem you need to manage unless you have a lot of income.
As for the advice to not buy everything offered, I see no problem in buying small quantities from lots of places on a visit trip in order to have souvenirs. Buying 3 bottle or more quantities of everything will add up quickly. Even 3 bottles per visit is over 3 cases on a 14-winery tour, so be mindful of the fact that you aren’t obligated and can avoid the excessive shipping expense of a single-bottle shipper in that situation. For list purchases, you need to factor the delivery costs into the purchase decision.

At the end of the day, it’s a 3-axis budget. Dollars, cellar space, and liver capacity/preference all have to be factored into the purchase decision. Good advice I received early on in this respect – slow down. There are many vintages to come and discoveries to be made.

Cheers,
fred

Lucky for me, the wineries tell me how much to spend.

Without allocations, I wouldn’t know when to stop.

This is the first year I’ve tracked it (focusing primarily on lists). I made a spreadsheet of all of the lists I’m on, when (approximately) they come out, and how much I spent on them during the past two years. Then I kind of arbitrarily said I’d like to cut the spend by 25% this year, so I set that as an annual target, and set target spends for each list this year (including several that I decided to stop buying from). I’m not being super strict about it, but I feel better at least trying to impose some discipline. And it forced me to think about which wines I enjoy the most, so I can allocate more budget there, while allowing myself to stop buying things I no longer really love.

I should probably also do something similar to track non-list purchases, but I had to start somewhere…

CONTROL ?
HA, HA ! VERY FUNNY !

I feel your pain. Over the years I have developed a list of my favorites and I have tried (pretty successfully) to limit my purchases to only those wines on the list. However, costs were still growing as some of the favorites continued to increase in cost every year. I finally had to do a major reset this year and arbitrarily crossed out every wine over $100 on my list. It wasn’t fun saying goodbye to those old favorites, but I felt it was necessary. Like Sean, I also maintain a calendar of when list offers come out and what I have spent in previous years - it helps me keep focused on what I plan to purchase over the year. Cheers!

I control spending by reading threads in the Asylum and Epicurean Exploits instead of Wine Talk

neener [stirthepothal.gif]

Seriously though, wine talk threads often introduce FOMO (fear of missing out)

You are always going to buy more when you visit wineries. It is not just that the wines taste better at the winery. Also, when you come home, the wines taste better because you remember the visit. And, I assume you are visiting wineries you already like or for some other reason are interested in - your visits are not random. Budget accordingly.

One way to budget is to buy fewer wines from each winery.

I got married

My wife thinks I like denying myself things more than indulging. I fear she’s right.

I find it easier to come up with a budget in terms of # bottles rather than cost. Understand your consumption history and then look at your top 10 favorite producers and figure out how many you want to buy from them. The rest is exploration but track of how many you have purchased for the year and how many you have left to buy. Also I have a self-imposed rule that I never buy more than 3 bottles of a wine I haven’t tasted.

I gained control by getting off all the mailing lists, it was stressing my wallet to spend on their schedule instead of mine. I can still get my hands on 90% of the wines I wish to buy, via retail, auction, friends.

I cannot offer much in regards to the travel part, it can be tough to limit purchases while taking winery visits. They are so much fun, and when a winery representative gives me that one-on-one attention, I feel compelled to buy. I do try and stop at a case though, and ship it myself. I guess that helps keep it to 12 bottles.

Thanks everyone for the honest and candid insights.

My wife and I find the wine tends to taste BETTER at home than at the winery, mostly because we’re able to concentrate on the one bottle rather than it being one of 50-75 (usually very good) wines tasted on a trip – and a sip or two at a time. We’ve found this repeatedly over nearly a dozen trips to California wine country.

I think the spreadsheets and tracking are a great idea, especially with it being the beginning of the year.

Sometimes the sheer absurdity of the quantity of bottles purchased stuns me into a temporary buying freeze.

FIFY [wink.gif]

Annnnnnd, the Littorai offer just hit my inbox…

Sounds like you live on the lonely island.