It’s so good to see these younguns following in our footsteps. Can’t wait for them to make the same mistakes we did. The palate shift is the bigun, but, surprisingly, I still find that I enjoy the wines in my cellar that my palate shifted from (for the most part)
You know how people get all depressed because reading Facebook makes them feel as though everyone else is having a way better life than they have?
WB is becoming like that. Everyone else is cutting back, being smarter, dropping lists, rebalancing, shrinking their storage.
30, single, my CellarTracker just surpassed 500 bottles at the beginning of the year and have since added another 24 bottles. I’ve been at this wine buying, collecting, hoarding thing for a little over two years now. I’m starting to think I may need to seek professional help.
A sommelier?
If you are young listen carefully. I wish I had listened to the person who told me this in 1992. Buy Burgundy, from small excellent producers (not necessarily the DRC types). Store them well. Wait 20 years and then you can sell them and travel around the world enjoying fine food, culture, and not worry about the little luxuries of life. If I only would have listened and stocked up on the Rousseaus’s, Ponsots, D’Angervilles, Jayers, Roumier, Leroys…still remember having the chance to buy Leroy Village 1990 for something ridiculous like $20 a bottle, in case quantity. I would be the Cheshire Cat by now.
29 here, DINKs with no mortgage. Started collecting in earnest at 27, up to ~250 bottles now and laying down ~100 per year.
We have mainly focused on Oregon pinot and chard, Beaujolais,German Riesling, CA Zin/Syrah/field blends, and select CA cabs. Mainly stick to producers we love (Patty Green, Foillard, Goodfellow, Prum, Bedrock, Ridge, Rivers Marie) and build into those we “discover”.
I need an imported wine mentor! Pricing has averted me from BDX and burgs, but would love to find our niche, similar to bojo (although it’s certainly seeing some price inflation).
Tim -
I started around 26 or so as well. I really wish that I had stocked away more Bordeaux for the long haul. If you like Bordeaux, but not the prices, I encourage you to look at the the 2014 vintage. It is a beautiful, classic vintage, and is not hyped and priced like 2014 and 2015. You can find some excellent, age-worthy wines in the price range of the wines you appear to buy. WineSearcher has Leoville Barton at $60, a killer wine and price. Gary’s and K&L have Grand Puy Lacoste at $60. Sociando Mallet. Cantemerle. I just bought Gazin for $40 off Wine Bid. Easy to find killer values. There is a thread on this forum on the quality 2014s.
Another affordable niche is Loire cabernet franc. Check out a few. Generally excellent values and are age-worthy.
Looks like you have a pretty broad palate, which is great.
67 (am I the oldest fart here?) and still buying a few agers. But I bike 1000 miles a month and my daughter loves wine, so I’m gonna stay the course a while longer.
A head’s up: the 14 GPL has been available all along at Total Bev for $60, and they periodically send out a 15% off coupon to ppl on their list. $51 for that wine is going to look like a gift in 15 years. They also have decent stocks of other 14s that qualify for the 15% off treatment (basically any wine they have in stock if the price doesn’t end in a 7).
42, have a 2 year old, new house and mortgage and don’t plan on slowing down the cellar. What I do plan on doing is buying less off mailing lists at prices that have sky-rocketed since 2001 when I started on them and buying more imports and newer producers not doing first release Napa Cabs at $250.
Will only continue buying SQN, MacDonald, RM: Pinot for my wife and Cab for me, and Andremily. If friends want others while they wait they can have my allocations.
32 with two kids under 3. I’m in the early stages of amassing and truly loving it. The wife is on board too!
The youth movement is strong!
52, started that other thread about stopping buying but don’t tell the folks over there I’m over here!
600 square feet of cellar, which holds a lifetime of wine but I find it hard to stop buying.
I’ve got enough of the good stuff to last me but I’m still buying wine, though more modestly priced.
A fair amount of Bourgogne, Savigny, Givry, etc from 2015 which delights both my wife and I midweek.
Chianti still playing a fair role in my consumption and purchasing.
I’ve been transitioning from the greats of Barolo as the prices have risen to the next tiers down and will be happy I did that. It’s actually a pretty fascinating time to be doing so as the roughly $50 and under wines can be truly remarkable.
My buying is not terribly consistent year to year, but it seems to be consistently outpacing my consumption.
Lessons I’ve learned.
Buy all the great wine you feel comfortable with. When they are mature you’ll be thrilled with the prices you paid and the provenance, and there is always a market for those wines.
Buy more magnums, and not all great. I bought a lot of great wines in mags but over the holidays and in the backyard in the summer I find I need more modest wines in bulk, though still with some age on them. Produttori Barbaresco, Rioja Reserva, lower-end super tuscans and Chianti Riservas, a smattering of village Burgundy, Bordeaux and Cali Cabs, some Oregon Pinots all come in very handy but are easily overlooked when they are released.
Don’t buy lots of cheap wine because it’s cheap. There is always a ton of cheap wine floating around. Spend more of this money on the wines above.
Now I need to go back and make believe I’m going to stop buying wine, which I will, some day.
Just turned 34, 3 kids 8 and under, 2 dogs. Private school for the 3 kids, and mostly wondering how life costs so damn much. I have a small collection of very good wines, but have found that the more I get into wine, and the more I go to places like Graileys, the higher and higher the price per bottle gets. That’s precluded me from actually amassing any kind of collection. My goal is to figure this out, buy heavier in Rhone, Brunello, Oregon, and buy smarter in Bordeaux. Napa pricing is making Burgundy seem fairly reasonable, and I love the wines. I may even try this Loire trash that Bobby keeps going on about.
26 as of December, getting married August of this year and kids are on the horizon in the next few years. Currently our cellar is basically full of Cali Syrah/Rhone and Cabs (though there’s plenty of room to add more racking). I’m having a hard time cutting back on the mailing list buying, especially from people we’ve visited. Too many good people and too much good wine! Looking to start adding more Pinot and Chard this year to balance out all the heavy reds.
I like this thread a lot more than the other ones that are talking about having too much wine and stopping buying. Go for it! It is an exciting “hobby” and one that can be shared with others (other consumers, I mean). I love it when I share wine with young couples who have chosen to take a wine/food vacation in Napa instead of planting themselves on some beach! The couple shares the experience, and they continue to share the experience with their purchased bottles back home. They take time out for themselves, away from the kids, and I think it is a very healthy thing.
I can’t stress how important this is for certain wines, especially Burgundy (which I love) and Champagne (which , for me, is fungible). You really can’t backfill these wines and I really don’t like to buy grey market. When I first started collecting, I never bought except on release. A little bit later, when I had a bit more money, I started buying some wines on the secondary market. If the cork is soaked half-way up, your not getting the wine the way it was meant to be, period. Wines I’ve cellared since release don’t look like that. If I were to give one piece of advice to young collectors it would be to buy all of the thinly traded (for me that was Loire and Northern Rhone) or easily damaged (for me that was Burgundy) that you can. Don’t worry about cellaring CA wines, BDX, etc… They will always be available and once you get the first critic score price bump, you rarely see another one unless it gets a late in life bump, like Lynch-Bages 1989 and 1990. Also, if you like Piedmont nebbiolo, buy as much as you can afford of wines you like on release. It doesn’t have to be Conterno/Mascarello.
66 years old, two kids, one grandson. The problem with this thread is that we old farts are talking a different language. 200 bottles per year is slowing down for me. I could barely fit my Burgundy collection in a 175 bottle Eurocave, and we know how I feel about Burgundy. You young children, most of whom are younger than my oldest son (38), need to pick up the pace. 
It’s been about 20 years since Motor Oil Marvels…
I like the theory but if your goal is to have a bunch of money in 20 years then there are far better things to invest in than wine.