If you have offsite storage, how many bottles do you keep at home

My cellar is at the office so access is not an issue. At home I keep around 40 bottles composed of mostly weekday stuff plus a few choice bottles in case an impromptu tasting with friends pops up.

Usually 50-60 at home (two 34 bottle wine fridges).

Our kitchen has a built in wine fridge that holds probably 140 bottles (it is usually not entirely full, but mostly). The rest is offsite.

I have learned (the hard way) that the key to keeping a lean inventory at home is to ensure that your offsite cellar is organized by drinking date. Stuff to be aged goes in the back, stuff to be consumed goes in the front. That way you don’t have to rummage through dozens of heavy boxes in order to find something that’s actually palatable today. This dramatically shortens your cellar visits.

What this requires is an annual (or perhaps semi-annual) cellar reorganization, as well as some kind of consistent system for assessing readiness to drink (I use CT drinking dates as a rough guide). I assembled my 300 bottle collection over the last year in a completely haphazard fashion and it took a solid five hours to reorganize it a couple of weeks ago. I didn’t need to work out after that.
IMG_8132r2.JPG

I use IWV in Stoughton…I wish I was as organized as you. I moved up to Boston in January and literally just said take everything since I live in Seaport and have no space for any wine.

in Florida 108 bottles at home and a new offsite storage locker for 6 cases
in NY- about 1800 bottles at home (all actively cooled) and lots offsite in Clifton NJ

I had endless problems keeping track of and finding things with this method, plus it’s a lot of work every so often to re-organize as you say. This past weekend I completely redid my offsite storage with cardboard tubes as some others have done on here. They’re just stacked in a honeycomb and I can do 3 deep (maybe just 2 for riesling bottles). The capacity is actually a little better than I was getting with boxes before, and I have space for a few boxes in front too! It’s a much better system. I use cellartracker bins alphanumerically for row/column (ie., D5, 4th row of tubes down, 5 across) to track where things are.

To answer the original question, around 100 at home in a Eurocave, the rest offsite.

150 at home consisting of easy drinking wines with a couple nicer bottles mixed in. The rest is offsite, 1,800 miles away…have to work on that.

I figure you need at least a hundred or so at home. But a lot depends on where your off site is.

I have one about ten minutes away but they close at 4 on weekends. And I have another, with most of my wine, about 60 miles away that I haven’t seen for years.

about 40 at home, 2.5%

This is exactly what I do in my offsite. And for the same reasons. I use cardboard boxes numbered as bins in CT. It’s a great way to bury things I don’t want to touch for a while. Every year or two I do a full inventory and re-org some things for drinking windows.

I’m not really relevant as I’m ITB and usually about half of what I own is in my warehouse in PA.

I have about 500 bottles in the basement in Maine and about the same in the warehouse, most of which needs age. I have plenty of room in the basement if I ever want to bring it all home and it’s a pretty impeccable environment, floor temp fluctuating over the year from 42 - 65.

Dan Kravitz

Home inventory fluctuates between 150-200 bottles which we keep in three different coolers: A 180-bottle Dometic, mostly for reds and over size; a 56-bottle Vinotemp for whites and dessert wines, and a 26-bottle beverage cooler that I run at 47 degrees for ready-to-drink blancs and bubblies.

Offsite is a 50-case locker which I’ll visit every 2-3 months

This is my ideal scenario

1 Like

When I had offsite storage, I had about 200 bottles at home most of the time. Since my storage facility wasn’t the kind I could organize or visit regularly, it made sense to have a good selection on hand.

I have about 100-150 bottles in my cellar but I need to buy a fridge soon

Ok I finally bit the bullet on an interim measure, while my wife and I decide what we are going to do with our house, a decision that I know will take years! I have a ton of stuff coming in over the next month and my off-site storage company is totally out of available lockers, while my lockers are 100% full. So I bought a really nice Vinotheque from Wine Enthusiast. Holds 250, stainless steel door and shelves. Looks pretty decent. Not sure where I put it, likely in the game room, but it does seem nice aesthetically, well, as nice as these coffins can look. The units were on sale, with white glove delivery and tax, for $3,065. Not too shabby.

https://www.wineenthusiast.com/vinotheque-by-wine-enthusiast-wine-cellar

So back to the question, that will get me to 350 bottles between home and office, while the bulk of my “agers” remain in offsite storage.

Missed this last time; I have a 50 or so bottle cooler at home (largely older wines) and around 30 to 50 on the floor (mostly younger wines for short-term consumption) in a cooler room, but basically at 70-75 degrees or so.

I have a 38 bottle wine fridge at home but I think I’d be better off with room for 60 - 100 bottles at home. My wine is safer at my offsite, so I don’t want to keep too many bottles at home in a wine fridge anyway.

150ish at home, 700ish off-site or waiting to ship