POLL: How many bottles in your collection?

WINE TALK
21

No idea. Fewer than a thousand. More than 500.

22

I’m always too scared to scroll to the bottom of CellarTracker to see the number of bottles. It would be even more terrifying to glance at the total cost.

23

This is a lot of people or percentage wise with over 1000 bottles.

My question is, do the people with more bottles have a higher tendency to answer this poll?

I have 240. I was the first to be in that category when 7-9 already were in the 1000 or more group

24

I don’t mind the bottle count either. Total cost or value tells me to hold back some.

25

I think you would find that alot of people have right above 1000. I’m at 1050 or so and I expect that to be pretty stable over the next 10 years given my current consumption pattern.

26

Ha! That’s what I thought at 500… and 600 … and 800 …

27

Yeah, I would have assumed the opposite! [snort.gif]

28

It is a word that reflects how much your grand kids like you! [snort.gif]

29

+1

A thousand bottles is the minimum to get into my local tasting group. Though I will say I was amazed to meet a local 35-year old who has over 2000 bottles already.

30

This is the sort of thing that one doesn’t talk about in polite company.

31

Then you have an idea, no?

32

That depends on whether their personalities incline them toward embarrassment or pride.

33

why would you be embarrassed about the amount of bottles you have? Everyone collects differently.

34

I met that description, the product of stupid, irresponsible, obsessive, and unsustainable buying habits that led me to drop out of the wine world for several years. I’m speaking only for myself, though, and do not intend to imply that the adjectives I applied to myself describe anyone else in particular. On the positive side, I now have a cellar full of well-aged wines and have reintegrated wine into my life in a much healthier way.

It helps that, like the proverbial frog in boiling water, the shock of the price differential between vintages up to about 2002, the last vintage I bought on release before my hiatus, and release pricing for the 2009 and 2010 vintages available when I ended my hiatus, makes it much easier to say no than if I’d seen the pricing move more gradually over that period.

35

No big deal, I think. Americans are competitive by nature, too much so. Better to be comparing cellar size than cheating on exams at Harvard or destroying the world economy out of pure greed! But this just in: size really DOESN’T matter when it comes to wine cellars! It is the quality, not the number of bottles, that matters, within reason. (Few people would prefer a 5-bottle cellar, consisting of 5 bottles of, say, 1990 Chave Hermitage, to a 1,000-bottle cellar of some diversity but pot luck as far as quality goes. Many would prefer a 200-bottle cellar with diversity and uniform quality of the 1990 Chave to a 1,000-bottle pot luck cellar.) I have fewer bottles right now than I have had in 15 or more years, but the quality has been ratcheted up to a point where I no longer have to open wines that do not interest me. I think that periodic cellar thinning, including trading away one’s mistakes, or, if not mistakes, the wines that, over time, are found to be less enjoyable than others, is key and an important part of the gratification that the hobby offers…

36

What I think is that people more bottles tend to be Berserkers. [berserker.gif]

37

Is that the appropriate emoticon - or is this? - [headbang.gif]

38

+/- 250 wine with another +/-75 in beer

39

I was actually looking for the number 2…as in 2 many.

40

+1. That’s why I put mine in hide. I would hate to see the true value end up being worth a nice car.