2019 purchases vs. overall cellar

My wine purchases in 2019 varied a great deal in comparison to the overall makeup of my cellar. A lot of this was a result of wanting more Champagne, but some also resulted from buying fewer wines that need a lot of aging (because of my age). My purchases were:

34% white Burgundy
23% Champagne [only 3% of my overall cellar]
18.5% red Burgundy
10% red Bordeaux (and some of these were half bottles for early consumption)
7% German

My cellar is

47% red Burgundy
18% German
8% white Burgundy
6% red Bordeaux
6% California reds (Cab and Zin)

I admire your organizational skill!

My cellar is 100% pandemonium but I try to keep certain grapes/types of wines in nearby areas of the cellar.

My typical method for choosing what to drink is eerily similar to a peyote walk.

My 2019 purchases were 0% white burgundy, which isn’t far off from my cellar. :slight_smile:

Purchased only (a) aged reds; (b) champagne; and (c) 375s of everyday wines in 2019, and the same will be true in 2020 (although fewer in each category).

Interesting exercise:
Cellar:
California Red/White/Rosé - 17.2%. It surprised me that CA was so high but it is because white and rosé make up 35% of my CA wine
Champagne - 13.3%
Oregon PN and Chardonnay - 13%
Burgundy Red and White - 7.8%
Bordeaux Red and White - 6.5%
Tuscany - 6.3%
Rhone North and South - 5.7%

Purchases: 304 bottles
California Red/White/Rosé - 25.7% Berserker Day got me
Champagne - 16.4%
Tuscany - 8.9%
Rhone - 7.2%
La Rioja - 5.6%
Burgundy - 5.3%
Sicily - 4.6%

What I found particularly interesting about this exercise is that the percentage of wine that I buy and/or hold outside my top holdings/purchases stays year over year in a narrow band between 25% - 35%. I guess I have my favorite regions after all.

I posted in another thread today 2019 purchases versus 2019 consumption, which I also find interesting. I’m always reassured when I see that my purchases are roughly in line with consumption. I know that my cellar and my purchases will no longer be aligned since I’ve stopped buying a number of regions.

My purchases for 2019 were also skewed to Champagne. And I have also stopped buying wines that require a lot of time , purchasing mostly short term drinkers. I have also purchased way less wine than in previous years.

in Cellar

Bordeaux Blend 16.1
Cab 15.7
Syrah 13.9
Red Rhone blend 12.6
Pinot 10.4
Zin 9.5
Chardonnay 4.2
Champagne 2.7
White Rhone blend .5


2019 Purchases
Bordeaux Blend 1.8
Cab 7.6
Syrah 8.2
Red Rhone blend 7.6
Pinot 10.5
Zin 8.8
Chardonnay 8.1
Champagne 12.3
White Rhone blend 6.4

My cellar is predominately Bordeaux, Cal Cab, Rhône, and Cal Chard. This year, just like you because of my age, I bought more Cal Chard, Chablis, Champagne, and Loire.

It is called CellarTracker. Put in the bottles and it will do all the calculations for you. champagne.gif

Me too. Purchased 189 bottles in 2016, 175 in 2017, 126 in 2018 and 70 in 2019.

Consumption is harder to figure out than purchases as I only have #s of wines from my personal cellar, which does not include wines I drink that are from the cellars of others (I drink a decent amount of wine at offlines or dinners with friends where everyone brings a bottle or two), at my country club (mostly cheaper wines that I buy from the wine club there (these purchases are not in my purchase #s)) and at restaurants. My guess is that red Burgundy dominates the count followed by white Burgundy and German wines with Champagne next. Wines from Sicily would be higher if I include wines at my country club.

I have been too lazy to enter everything into cellartracker, but just doing a back of the envelope calculation my purchases this year were roughly 40% red burgundy, 40% champagne, 10% CA, 5% white burg and 5% everything else (italian, rhone and rioja, mostly). My overall cellar is similar but a bit less champagne, maybe 20% total.

I’ll play. Purchases of Bordeaux (25% of my cellar) were consistent. California (27% of my cellar) was up slightly, for no apparent reason. I tripled the size of my Champagne and doubled the size of my Oregon holdings, in both cases, due to a conscious decision to switch funds over to those wines (and a reflection in part of the small starting position at the beginning of the year). Tuscan purchases were up, mainly due to strong vintages in 2015 and 2016. German purchases (9% of my cellar) were down significantly, as they have been for a number of years, as it is difficult to find what I want locally. Red Burgundy was down a little, mainly due to having gone long in 2015 the year before.

To Sarah’s point, my purchases do not track my consumption because much of what I have purchased recently is intended for long-term aging (hopefully, drinkable before I die). I think of it as retirement assets. I do some backfilling, but it’s expensive and thus fairly limited.

For purposes of this comparison, to my mind, only consumption from my own cellar is relevant since purchases to my cellar only fund drinking from my cellar. I am interested in seeing if I’m actually stocking what I do, and likely will, drink. I found at one point I was still buying a good amount of bordeaux, but drinking less and less of it. So that was revelatory. Restaurant purchases or friends’ bottles don’t enter into that balance.

Shifting a little Burgundian and Piedmontese:

—————————In Cellar———Purchases
Bordeaux—————46%—————31%
Champagne————10%—————12%
Burgundy——————1%—————12%
Rhone————————8%—————12%
Loire—————————2%— ————5%
California——————20%—————18%
Piedmont———————2%————-10%
Germany———————8%—————-0%
Other—————————3%—— ———0%

I stock upon Germans every few years and this wasn’t one of them. No loss of interest in the area.

Region: Overall/2019

Burgundy: 37/24
California: 10/5
Bordeaux: 9/0
Piedmont: 9/7
Champagne: 8/23
Rhone: 4/7
Riesling: 4/10
Friuli: 2/6
Languedoc: 2/10
Corsica: 1/6

Ditto. That’s also my method for choosing what to buy. Always happy to try something new.

Region: Overall/2020 (updated)

Barolo: 36/58
Barbaresco: 5/2
Burgundy: 16/29
Israel: 12/7
Veneto: 9/0
Tuscany: 9/0
Spain: 6/0
Bordeaux: 3/4
Rhone: 2/0
Germany: 2/0

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What do you have in wines from Israel. Don’t know that much about wines from Israel - too many of them are too modern and alcoholic. But, when I was there a year ago, we visited Somek winery and enjoyed the wines there.

Interesting exercise. My lists reflects a bit of a shift to focus on Italy/Germany that is somewhat driven by narrowing purchases to a handful of producers I really like and also by economics (fine print: Burgundy has become too bloody expensive).

Cellar

Burgundy 22.1%
Piedmont 17.7%
Mosel 16.0%
Champagne 11.1%
California 7.6%
Rhone 7.2 %
Abruzzi 6.3%
Bordeaux 5.6%
Sicily 4.2%

2019 Purchases

Piedmont 17.6%
Mosel Saar Ruwer 16.1%
Champagne 12.6%
Burgundy 12.5%
Rhône 10.0%
California 9.6%
Tuscany 8.7%
Sicily 4.6%
Loire Valley 3.7%

I have no experience with a peyote walk but my purchases are about as random as a drunk walk from a lamppost (despite being able to retrospectively pull up percentages):

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Not to be confused with post-offline behavior:

CB07B24E-88AB-4B51-BFC4-03B2090C864F.gif