Although Howard poses his argument in terms of hyperbolic propositions that look like strawmen, there is a serious question behind them that could be taken more seriously. Cellars have limits on the number of bottles they can hold. Budgets have limits on the amount of money one can spend. If diversity is an inherent value, what is one willing to sacrifice for it in order to achieve it? One must logically be willing to sacrifice something or it isn’t a value one seeks, just a quality one is, for no clear reason one is happy when one happens to find it. If one follows Jim Cowan’s method, which seems an eminently sane one, and one finds one prefers mostly Burgundy and German Riesling or traditionally made Bordeaux, Northern Rhone and Loire reds, just, ahem, to take random examples, then, either that is what one’s cellar will contain or one will have to buy wines one might not otherwise choose to achieve the value of diversity.
For me, there are far, far more types of wines, varieties, regions, and producers than I can keep up with. I could drink a wine I’ve never had before every day, for years to come, and be completely happy.
If I had Howard’s cellar I wouldn’t worry about diversity. You’ll have to admit this is one of the most sophisticated humble brags you’ll read.
Let’s say it’s a given that no one believes in buying wine one knows one doesn’t like. And that most of us prefer not to drink the same thing every night if the week.
I definitely consider myself of the Buy What You Love school. I have often extolled the virtues of case (or multiple case) purchases on this board, and have admitted that I no longer have much interest in experimenting. That said, I do think about diversity in my own cellar, and those thoughts are closely tied with food.
One function of the cellar in our house is as a kitchen companion. A toolbox, almost. I need a vinious tool for every job likely to come up on my table, and I delight in having those tools available to me. Sometimes, we realize a tool is missing. For instance a few years ago we more than once found ourselves wishing for “the right slutty Cotes du Rhone,” to go with some particular dishes. We didn’t have it. We don’t often drink Rhones, and the ones we have tend toward the elegant and aged. But despite having a cellar full of wine we love, we didn’t have something we felt we needed. So we filled that hole.
I am not a white wine drinker, and hence would not know.
Holy strawmen batman!
Agreed. On the other hand, your CdR example likely won’t occur to somebody lacking an appreciation of wine diversity.
I own almost no Alsatians…but at a dinner last year, friends brought some spicy aged Alsatian whites that were an ethereal pairing with the pastrami course. A few years earlier, an orangey oddball St. Joseph Blanc was somehow magic when paired with an asparagus soup. A boiled Portuguese Bacalao dinner enjoyed near Guimaraes could not be the same without fresh Vinho Verde. There’s no shortage of combinations that click…but not without cellar diversity or diverse wine experiences, not to mention a desire to try new things and a bit of luck.
RT
If diversity as it’s being used here includes continuing to buy and try new wines from places I’d never bought wine from before or different wines from the same places, then I think I’m just as diverse now as ever.
Over the years some places fell off. Some became areas of intense focus. And it’s never been about diversity in a narrower sense (wines from the most places and sources possible) for its own sake, but it has always been about diversity of experience and the possibility of discovery.
Perhaps it’s useful to separate being open to new experiences from the desire to experiment. While I no longer buy mixed cases of unknowns for the cellar, and don’t feel my cellar suffers for having no wines at all from the Southern Hemisphere, I absolutely love fortuitous, unexpected, even shocking new pairings and experiences. Every once in a while, those surprises make their way to the cellar.
I like to be diverse in what I try, so that I don’t miss out on discovering something I might really love, be it a new producer, a new region, a new grape variety, etc. And my inner wine geek does get some some pleasure from being able to say that I have indeed tried wine from X country or Y grape. But having, for example, tried a perfectly decent Moroccan wine 20 years ago, I didn’t go out and load up on Moroccan wines in the cellar. I don’t automatically “diversify” my cellar to start including something new just because I tried it once and it was OK.
In what I actually cellar, I like to be diverse so that I have a variety of things my wife and I like to match different wines with different foods, or just to avoid drinking the same thing every night. But I happen to like many different kinds of wines, even though there are major categories I don’t particular care for and thus don’t cellar, and in fact I like more wine types than I would “need” to like if the only purposes of diversity were those listed in the preceding sentence. But if the only wine I liked was pinotage, then my cellar would be 100% pinotage and I’d drink something other than wine on nights when I feel like I’ve had pinotage too many nights in a row.
I guess what this means for me is that the main purpose of cellar diversity is to be able to drink the wines I like, which happen to be from a wide variety of regions and grapes, even if only from a handful of countries.
Within those regions and grapes, I would have a lot less producer diversity if not for the tendency of great producers to be subject to demand growing faster than supply, and thus prices growing faster than I’m willing to keep up with them. I would be perfectly content, for example, for all of my Hermitage to be Chave. It’s not, but that’s because I was eventually priced out and had to seek out other producers, not because of some self-imposed mandate to diversify my Hermitage producers. The same goes for many other producers in many other regions.
No wine diversity police here, Howard, but we do have diversity of opinion on all things wine . . . and that’s a good thing. ![[cheers.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/0/0ff9bfcdb0964982cd3240b6159868fbdf215b1a.gif "cheers"){kind=small}
I am still relatively early in my wine life and there are broad regions I know little about (like the entire southern hemisphere). My wine cellar has capacity limits and my budget has limits so there seems to be this constant push and pull of where should resources be allocated. I love exploring new regions (Loire red for example) and then need to make an evaluation of whether those limited resources will be focused there (Loire red is a definite yes) or whether to move on. My cellar is very heavy Barolo but sometime I don’t want a Barolo or the meal doesn’t call for a Barolo so it is nice to have a choice. Diversity for the sake of diversity is pretty silly but I do spend a good amount of time trying how I will fill out those limited number of slots in the wine racks.
Mark
At the end of the day, one’s cellar is their’s to consume and should therefore be a reflection of their consumption preferences. That’s not to say that one is unwilling to try new wines and explore new regions merely because of their narrower cellar diversity, simply that they have a preference for certain types of wines.
I think there’s also a difference between cellar diversity in terms of regions/varietals and cellar diversity in terms of options to drink. It’s certainly not necessary to have a cellar covering all of the world’s wine regions and varieties. Although I do think there is value of having a cellar with wines for a wide array of occasion and circumstances: wines drink by the pool on a hot summer’s day; those for drinking with spicy Thai food; those to drink with a Flannery steak; those for your friends who don’t like riesling/cab/pinot noir, etc. And while one can certainly make an argument that there is a single region/varietal that fits all of their needs, I reckon most would prefer to have at least a few different regions/varietals in the cellar to cover all of the occasions and circumstances in which they might consume wine.
To be honest, I don’t think what Jim is saying is that much different from what I said. I buy what I love.
I have opportunities to try other wines. I travel and have wines in restaurants (usually from the local region or country I am visiting), friends who give me wines to taste, wines tasted at parties, wines tasted at my Country Club’s wine group.
But, when I buy (as I said in my title WINE CELLAR diversity) wine for my cellar, I buy what I love. For example, I don’t have any Rhone wines in my cellar because I don’t really like them, but I do have Bordeaux and California Cabernet because I like some of them (the ones I buy). If I am drinking Pinot Noir it will be from Burgundy because I haven’t tasted Pinot Noirs from New Zealand, Alsace, Germany, California, Oregon, etc., I that I love. I have tons of German rieslings but no trocken ones because I have not tasted any that I love.
As Jim says, I buy what I love.
I don’t own any Rhone wines. I have never had a dish that required a Rhone wine - in other words where I could not use a wine that I like, for example a Bandol or a Zin or a Chinon or any number of other wines. I guess your palate is just a lot more finely tuned and sophisticated than mine is.
I have followed Howards trajectory. My cellar today is smaller and less diverse than when I was younger but at the same time it is more focused on the wines I like. That said I have wines from over 300 producers in my cellar.
I respect diversity of opinion and respect very much the opinions of quite a number of people here. They are making excellent points for themselves and we can have an interesting discussion, which is what I was hoping for.
But, I have little respect for people who respond with nonsense like this:
“Well some people only eat hamburgers when they go out to eat. There are many kinds of hamburgers: Burger King, McDonalds, Shake Shake, 5 Guys, In and Out, Sonic. So many kinds out there you could say you have a solid diet with such a vast array of hamburger meat without eating the same burger twice. I guess this is how Burgundy lovers think of their beloved pinot noir from the hallowed slopes.”
I have wines from over 20 regions (as defined by CellarTracker) in my cellar, but over 90% of my bottles come from 6 regions (all of which I have two colors of wine from).
<Sigh.>
Howard - Of course if you don’t like Rhones, you would not feel those are the right choice of pairing. I can’t stand amarone, and would never choose it, even if I did think, intellectually, that it might be a good pairing.
The sarcasm (my highlight), however, is definitely not called for here. My gut instinct, when I read the OP, is that I don’t believe in diversity for the sake of diversity either. But, as an exercise, I thought seriously about the question, came up with an example from my own life that could fit into that category, and shared it. I think you might be seeing criticism where none exists, and it’s causing you to react in an unnecessarily defensive manner. I assure you, none was intended.
Edited for punctuation.
Sarah,
Thank your for your comment. I really don’t care if people have a very diverse wine cellar or if people’s cellars contain all of one type of wine. I assume that many of us have cellars that are somewhere in between - most wines come from 2-4 regions, then we have another 5 or 6 regions where we have some wines that we drink more on occasion but really like, and then several types of wines where we only have one or a few bottles. Maybe we like one producer from that region or bought a bottle or two on vacation or whatever. For example, I like Bandol a lot but do not have that much of it and what I have is largely from a couple of producers. But, this is not all theoretical. There have been two threads recently where the diversity police have called out people for not having a diverse enough cellar or for not drinking wines that were geeky enough.
I just do not believe in diversity for its own sake. And, your comment with Amarone is just the point I was making. Your pairing with Rhones is only a perfect pairing because you like Rhone wines. If you did not, you would find a different wine to pair.
Sarah, I very much respect your approach to wine and did not mean to belittle you. You and I often do not like exactly the same types of wines but you like what you like with enthusiasm and bring a lot of joy to your love of wine and to your posts here. I am sorry if you think I meant to offend you rather than to make the point you did with Amarone.