I’ve done my share in keeping the Mosel economy afloat. Naturally, my local TT supplier is having another sale starting Thursday. I may need increase the fortress holdings again, before the tariff affected wines come in.
2&3
I have tried to slow down, buying fewer bottles from a producer than I might have in the past and I’ve dropped a few producers where I have enough or don’t feel they’re good value. But my problem is my tastes are expanding. I’m pretty much at capacity with a full cellar, nearly full 65F closet for grabbers, full tall reds fridge, and two nearly fully under counter whites fridges. Couple of unpacked boxes in the closet. Have thought of selling but haven’t taken the step.
With lots of family time over the holidays and gift giving I think I should make it to the spring but will probably Need to go off site at that time. Off site makes more sense at this time vs another fridge since we’re thinking of moving in the not too distant future.
I’m probably 50% long term, 25% medium term and 25% short term in current purchases.
It’s a slippery slope!
I am out of space and (pretty much) have stopped buying. Problem is, wine I bought 1-2 years ago is now arriving so space issues are critical. This is the last shipping season this will happen though (well, almost. envoyer is not going to be able to get me everything this season; there will be more boxes in the spring).
yes, I keep buying. It’s an illness. I’ll be interrupting last rites on myself to get one more good deal six pack . . .
We ran out of space a while ago and have two off site storage locations. I’ll buy some wine when I visit someone or if it’s an impossible to find thing, but that’s not so often these days.
Almost all of our buying these days is strictly opportunistic. Mostly I just buy when there’s a great deal to be had. Last night I found a wine that’s normally around $50/bottle and I bought the last four cases paying under eight bucks a bottle. A few months ago I picked up a Spanish wine that the importer dropped and we paid a fraction of the normal retail price. I’ve never wanted to be on any mailing lists and since we don’t “need” any wine, I won’t buy unless I get some kind of great deal. Unfortunately, hunting up deals can become addictive, and you still end up buying more wine than you could ever use.
My cellar is a crawl space so I have pretty much unlimited capacity. I have, however, disciplined myself to restrict my purchases… it is really hard. For my tastes I think a 2000 bottle cellar will serve well and that is my current target cellar size.
Your problem is not that you have too much wine. It is that your cellar is too small. You can always expand it. 
For an alternative viewpoint, Monthly check-in: Cellar inventory reduction plan - WINE TALK - WineBerserkers
If you need to donate some wine to thin your cellar, I know a good 501c3 that needs bottles for a holiday charity event, particularly wines that are made by women (as Blessons for Women www.blessons.org is a charity that benefits women).
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I sell them and without a doubt, lose money overall. Have run into this issue on several occasions. Had 3500, downsized (consigned) down to 1500, then it grew to 2000, then consigned down to 1100. Now I am back to 1250 once all the '16 Bordeaux futures come in. Only have enough room for 1250 but that’s it. No off site storage on Kauai, so I will likely consign down to 900, before May 1-ship window closes for 6 months. Having an up to date inventory really helps. Goal was 4 years worth or roughly 800 bottles. Still is. I have jumped off most all lists except for Scarecrow, Screagle, Marcassin, SQN, Pride Reserves, Cayuse, Vine Hill. Like most collectors I am a sucker for a good deal on wines I enjoy and make random purchases. I am doing a better job of buying & counting bottles I purchase and not waiting for special occasions to drink them.
Love them twice as I have 2 in different places.
Rule number 1: Stop buying when you run out of space.
Rule number 2: There is always more space. Those new bottles are wafer-thin.
Parties and off site storage here.
I think the question might come down to different responses based on why you’ve run out of space.
Two of many possible situations…
A)My cellar holds X bottles of wine because I’ve done some math (or something) and feel that’s the right number of bottles based on consumption, aging, budget, w/e.
B)My cellar holds X bottles because that’s how big the room is/that’s how many racks I bought/etc.
If you’re in group B (as I largely am) as you get towards full you start doing math and realize that it was too small to start with. This results in different conclusions than if you’re in group A.
Does that make sense?
I’m basically at capacity in my cellar, and realizing that I’ve skipped a region or two I’d like to add, and am still a ways off from ideal drinking windows on at least a couple of the regions I cellar… so need some additional capacity. In part, I’m going to alter some purchasing towards nicer bottles to age as some of the entry level aging experiments haven’t proven worthwhile to me. Additionally, I’m working on coming up with a means of adding some storage to the existing space-something like an center island on wheels I can move around as needed to access the racks on the perimeter etc. I’m hoping to avoid off-site storage as it will incur some wrath of the significant other…
For those that cellar toward drinking windows, has anyone experimented with the storage temp to accelerate aging? (E.g., instead of 55 degrees, 65 degrees or 68 degree cellaring? This shouldn’t accelerate too quickly but perhaps 1.5 - 1.75x the normal aging rate?).
Andrew
I think I need to switch the way the door opens and I am back in business.
I slow my buying but do not stop, have to keep those verticals going that I will never open all at the same time to actually compare.
Right now I am over capacity and trying to figure out where to put fall shipments. I am skipping a few releases and selling wine to free up space.
Julie - that’s a question that’s going to get you a lot of strange looks. It’s a great idea - leave your wine on the kitchen counter if you want it to be ready in a month, in the fridge if you want it to be ready in 10 years.
Unfortunately it doesn’t really work that elegantly. You can retard a lot of aging by keeping your stuff really cold, but you don’t stop 100% of the chemistry. And since wine aging involves a lot of different reactions, aging at a warmer temperature can cause some to move too quickly. The problem is that there’s really no science to consult because every wine will age at a slightly different rate and will have slightly different reactions going on. That’s why the fifty-some degrees is basically a rule of thumb more than anything else.
It’s an interesting question though, because I’ve had a lot of wine that wasn’t stored “properly” and yet was quite tasty after a number of years.
There are days I wonder if we have as much wine in our shop than some here have in their home cellar, offsite cellar, on hold, to be shipped at release.
I voted Other. Run out of space, gotta drink it down. Off-site ain’t happening.
You forgot what I guess would be the most common and most realistic answer from a self-selecting group of wine fanatics…
You promise yourself you’ll stop buying when you’re out of room, but then come up with endless excuses why you need this case, and that one, but you’ll definitely stop after that, except for …