I’m one who appreciates the variety in your notes, Sarah. I’m guessing that you try a variety of different wines, and then put away a case of those that you really love, and then try those over time while mixing in other cellar treasures and new releases. Like you, I’ve been doing this awhile, so I’ve built up experience with a lot of wines, and for wines that need age I usually just buy in 3-4 bottles lots and then put them away until I think they might be close. As an example, I know that young Produttori SV Barbarescos are going to be pretty tannic and not offer the complexity that I like when they are aged properly. So, while it would be nice to buy a case of each in the vintages I like, my budget simply won’t allow that, so I buy a few bottles from a couple of vineyards and just leave them alone until they are 15 years old or more. I know they aren’t going to be over the hill by then, so I save them until I think they might be close to peak. For those who have the option to buy large quantities, more power to them. Even if I were able to buy large quantities of Champagne though, I’d still probably buy a case each of 12 different grower Champagnes that I love as opposed to 12 cases of one wine. But that’s just my way. 
I have about 6 mags and the rest 750.
The only wine I have a lot of mags is Krug 164.
I buy five cases of year of Tempier, two of the classique, one mix of the special cuvees, and two of the rose.
Storage is an issue, certainly, but cost-wise, one could argue the 08 champagnes are among the best values out there for their stature in the pantheon of wine relative to cost. A bottle of RC from a good vintage costs as much as 15 cases of 08 Dom found at a good price.
I’m lucky enough to live in a nicely sized house with a nice sized basement that has a large room that was relatively easy to cool to cellar temp. Certainly I couldn’t have easily had a cellar this size back in Los Angeles.
10 bottles of 2006 Taittinger Comte de Champagne. Trying not to open any more for at least a few years.
Well, when you put it that way, it doesn’t seem like enough.
At 11, this is close to the top for me actually. All in storage at the moment. I have a few cases of 2005 Bordeaux, and a couple cases of 2016 northern Rhône bottlings ahead of it.
This topic always exposes an interesting dichotomy. Count me among the pikers: I can’t remember buying a full case of a wine, although I am sure I have in the dim dark past. I suppose there is no “wrong answer.”
Also, although I could get pounced on for saying so, I am not a “variety guy.” I am old, pretty set in my ways on most things, and know what I like. It isn’t that I am incurious or won’t try “new things” when offered, but when out to spend my limited resources to stock the cellar, I buy things I know like, or am reasonably sure I will like. I never, ever, think “goodness, I haven’t any gewurztraminer or gruner and aren’t I the less for it. I shall diversify.”
This is absolutely the only right way to do it. If your name is Neal Mollen.
It’s a hobby, not an endeavor, at least to me. But what you want, drink what you like, make your own rules.
I mostly buy in 3s and 4s. Too many wines, too old, don’t drink enough blah blah blah… I do have a decent number of wines that I bought by the 6 pack as well.
In 2013 I bought 12 bottle cases of both the 2004 and the 2007 B Giacosa Falletto Barolo for US$85 at auction. Have 10 bottles left of the 2004 and the full 12 bottle case of the 2007.
So the 2007 Giacosa Falletto Barolo at 12 bottles is the most of any single wine in my cellar.
Brodie
It is rare that I buy a case of a single wine. Even when I buy a case from a producer in a year, given that most of my purchases are Burgundies and German wines, I generally buy a mixed case of different wines. My last two full cases of any wines purchased were Truchot 2005 Bourgogne Rouge and Truchot 2006 MSD Les Sorbes.
Other wines I have more that six of are 2015 Von Schubert Maximin Grünhäuser Abtsberg Spätlese and 2001 Domaine Rossignol Trapet Latricières-Chambertin.
I am down to six bottles of 2006 Taittinger Champagne Comtes de Champagne. I will have to rectify this.
If I may ask those people who buy a case or more of a single bottle and vintage:
- How big is your total collection?
- What percentage of your total collection is made up of 6-12+ bottle quantities of a single wine from one vintage (not a single wine across multiple vintages)?
- Did you try before you buy?
Interesting thread; I don’t usually buy much quantity either, 2-4 bottles of anything is the norm. I have 6 or so of some '05 Bordeaux (not especially sexy, Lagrange and Boyd-Cantenac) and also 6 of 2016 PLL. I tend to have @6 of Billecart-Salmon Rose and various Ulysse Collins champers at any time. Oddly, perhaps, I own the most burgundy, red and white, but have the fewest multiples there (though a decent number of verticals). Finally, some Beserker specials, Patty Greene and others, have hit 12, though now down.
More power to you . . . I just don’t drink enough wine to justify purchases in that quantity, even if I could afford it and store it. Would I love to drink a bottle of 2008 Dom each month for the next 20 years? Sure!
My answer - 22, which is an aberration because my uncle left me a lot of one wine when he died. After that it’s 10. I doubt I’ll get that high with any wines going forward unless my consumption patterns change.
Small.
Small.
No.
Speaking only for myself, I don’t use “variety guy” to mean “I need to own wines I don’t like just so I have more variety.” I use it to mean “I like many different wine types, and I’d like to have a nice stash of each in the cellar, and within most of those types there are plenty of producers I like, and I’d like to have bottles from a nice variety of those producers, and I’d like to have them across many vintages.” Maybe the problem is that I like too many different wines! ![[wink.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/0/04707e6a7bbb03e0153e349d8a9270d30e1e9525.gif "wink"){kind=small}
What it really comes down to is when I have the money and space to buy a case of wine, I would rather buy three bottles each of four different wines/vintages I like, or even two each of six, than buy 12 bottles of one wine I like. Either way, I will end up with 12 bottles of wine I like, which is priority 1, but I like the variety as a strong priority 2. Buying wines I don’t like is not one of the options. (It’s not dissimilar to food - perhaps some would eat pizza, or steak, or fried chicken, or salmon, or whatever, every night - or just rotate between two - but I’d rather eat all sorts of different food, but still avoid food I don’t like).
That being said, I’m like you in that I’ve been at this long enough to know that I don’t want to cellar many types of wine, and as such, my cellar has zero (or close to it) bottles of non-Burgundy pinot, whites made from sauvignon blanc, Veneto, Loire reds, Priorat, Alsace, and anything from Austria, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Chile, Argentina, Oregon (except a few chards and syrah), and Washington.
On the other hand, I nonetheless call myself a “variety guy” because that still leaves a whole bunch of different categories I do like and I do cellar - Bdx, Burg, N. Rhône, S. Rhône, Bandol, Tuscany, Piedmont, Taurasi, Rioja, Bierzo/Ribeira Sacra, Cali. cab and zin (and a little syrah), Musar red, Loire chenin, Chablis, Germany, Port, and stickies from the Loire and Bdx. Most of those categories were not on the list when I started down this long and winding road, and they got added because I came to like them (some many years ago, some in the last few years), but of course the older I get the less this list is likely to change. But when I very first started, it was Bdx and Cali. cab and that was it, and I’m very glad that is no longer the case.
But of course all of this is a personal preference. I’m in one tasting group where I’m the youngest person (and by several years), which is of itself a marvel. But there is no question in my mind that all of the other members have larger cellars than I do, yet each with less variety. One of them is probably 60% white Burg, 30% red Burg, and 10% Madeira, with nothing else. One was, for a long time, nothing but red Bordeaux and German Riesling, though he’s added some Cali cab and Italian reds more recently. Another is almost all red Bordeaux, Cali Cab, and Cali chard. As such, they probably have half-cases and full cases of all sorts of different wines, something I just can’t do with my budget, space, and love of so many different types of wine.
Which of us has the wrong approach? As you say, none of us has the wrong approach - for us. But being a “variety guy” doesn’t mean cellaring wines one doesn’t like.
I am mostly not in the demographic you’re targeting, as previously mentioned, but since I have done this a few times, and I think it’s interesting -
My first hard case purchase was a real splurge when I was just starting out on this journey. My LWS gave (and still does - same shop, too) 10% off on mixed cases. My MO then was to buy a case of wine - 11 bottles with a max price of $5 each (which has risen over time of course) and 1 bottle of maybe $25. I would put the expensive one in a cardboard case under the stairs in the basement to age, and drink the other 11 over time with dinner (opening 2-3 per week for budgetary reasons). When the 11 ran out, I’d go back and do it again. That was about all I could afford toward accumulating a cellar and I figured I’d get to where I had maybe 30-40 “good” bottles and then I could open one or two a year and they would have 15-20 years of age on them, and that would be the “splurge” end of the hobby. My, how things change.
Anyway, one day the new Wine Spectator arrived and the 1991 Hess Collection cab was rated 92 or 93 or some such, and it was something like $18 on the shelf. Since the rating was gospel (again, my how things change), I begged and pleaded with my wife, got her reluctant consent, and spent the $200 or so on a single case of a single wine. I was such a baller. Back to your question, at that time, that probably doubled the size of my collection of “good stuff under the stairs” and I did not try before I bought, because I had Laube’s assurance and what else did I need? As it turned, out, that was a great purchase and those bottles were all delicious, over quite a number of years. All gone now, of course.
After that, I probably didn’t buy a hard case for quite a number of years. Since then, I’ve done it maybe 2-3 times on “cellar” wines to get a deal (including the Champet and Vajra wines that were in my earlier answer as two of the three wines I own the most of). With both of those, they are a small part of my collection and I had tried the wine before in other vintages, but not in that vintage. I’ve also done it maybe 2-3 times with daily drinkers - once on the 2014 Grand Nicolet Cotes du Rhône which I bought, drank, loved, and went back and bought a case - and a couple of times to get a larger than normal hard case discount on a St. Joseph I had not tried, but trusted the seller. Again, these are a small part of my daily drinkers.
I’ve already said I’m not comfortable with those kinds of questions or that information, so I won’t answer #1, but I will say that about 2/3 of my cellar by volume is 6 bottles or more of a single wine from a single vintage.
As to #3, these days, I don’t taste much before buying, but that’s because I don’t buy many wines I don’t already know well after years and years of drinking and buying them. Sure, there are times I have something at a friend’s house or a restaurant that I love, and then I go out and buy some. In general, though, I no longer go to trade events or barrel taste, because I don’t really need to. I don’t need to taste every vintage of Keller GGs - I know I want them every vintage. I don’t need to taste every year’s Brana rose, or Produttori Barbaresco, or Emrich-Schonleber Halenberg, or Cavalotto San Giuseppe (when I was still buying young Barolo). I might buy more in vintages that promise to be to my taste, based on vintage characteristics and what I read from the winemakers and tasters I trust. I almost never buy a totally unknown wine anymore. On some rare occasions, I might buy a case of something solely on the recommendation of someone I trust, and I have rarely been steered wrong. Perhaps this means I misjudge here and there, and end up with more or less than turns out to be ideal, but that can happen even if you taste every wine before you buy it. My hit rate is pretty high. There’s very little in the cellar I don’t like, except the stuff that is for Jonathan to drink when I’m not around because he does like it.
~36 bottles each of Marsannay, Chambolle, and NV Champagne, and I have consumed quite a bit. The price and availability were there, so I kept going back. It helped to up the quality of my everyday wine, and that’s kind of where I’m at buying strategy-wise. Very few trophies nowadays.
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Who knows, >5k bottles, not really sure how much more. I have a couple hundred cases to enter into CT.
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<10%
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Yes
I buy a case fairly frequently of wines that I consider to be good values. Pepiere Briods, Lumpp 1er Crus, Vilmart Rubis NV, German rieslings etc. I like variety but if the value is compelling I try to jump on it. I wouldn’t buy them if I thought they’d be on the downslope within 5 years though.
Less than 20% of my wines are in 6+ quantities. I don’t always try the specific vintages before I buy but I’m usually familiar with the wine in general.