I know a lot of you have large quantities of wine. I’m only at 325 bottles but I’m real worried about spending too much more money on more wine than I can ever possibly drink within its expected “drinking window”. There is a difference in mature/aged wine and over the hill wine. And every wine is different.
So what is the procedure.
Sit on it as it adds to bottle count?
Drink it even though you would rather open up something good?
Gift it away and pretend you gave them a treasure?
Sell it on winebid to anybody who will take it?
That’s a good question, but is this actually a problem for most collectors though? Unless you only buy wines with a short lifespan, I cant imagine this being a problem for myself even if I had a cellar in the range of 2000-3000 bottles. My cellar is filled with wines (like German Riesling, Bordeaux, Burgundy, Barolo, and Brunello) that have fairly wide drinking windows, so there is plenty of time to drink up.
Also, I am far too cheap to let good wine go over the hill! If I paid for it, I will drink it!! lol
I think this can be a problem for people that go long on “daily drinkers” when they themselves are not daily drinkers. Looking at my CT…there are only 4 wines I have to consume by the end of 2018…and looking down at all of these I think those dates are wrong. I just had the Jadot earlier this year…it needs 3-5 more years to start opening up. The Bordeaux could be right…but I doubt it. The Paolo Be a might be right.
1x 1990 Louis Jadot Pommard 1er Cru Les Grands Épenots (2000-2017)
2x 1986 Château Prieuré-Lichine (1998-2018)
1x 2006 Paolo Bea Rosso de Véo (2014-2018)
Most of the wines I open that should be over the hill, judging by age, turn out to be quite drinkable.
I do have to push myself to open them, though, since I’ll usually try to pull a wine from the cellar I hope to be at peak.
I open them amongst wine-drinking friends, knowing whether they’re good or not is a crapshoot, but my wine friends value “interesting” even if overly mature.
Or I open it up at a party with great hoopla, knowing most people won’t know an OTH wine from a bottle of Meiomi or BV Coastal that’s been in the sun a few weeks.
Either way, it adds to my collective inventory of sensory experience and I don’t mind it. Had a number of supposedly OTH Cali cabs from the 70’s that have been surprisingly lithe and wonderful. Many that have been a bit geriatric but still interesting in small doses, like a crazy uncle.
After trying one bottle out to see if it is or isn’t past prime, I’ll give it to my sister if it’s not making me happy. She doesn’t know any better.
That doesn’t happen too often anyway. My cellar is about the same as yours (roughly 330-ish bottles) and only a handful are at the “drink very soon” stage:
6 x 1995 Arrowood Reserve Speciale
3 x 1995 Bertrand Ambroise Corton le Rognet
4 x 2001 Caymus Special Selection
Considering we bring a bottle to a wine club dinner at least once a month, and we dine at BYOB’s 2 or 3 times a month with friends, the above bottles won’t last very long. There are a few others that are just entering their ideal windows now that might be in that period for a couple more years:
6 x 2003 Arrowood Monte Rosso
6 x 2001 Arrowood Monte Rosso
4 x 2004 Caymus Special Selection
7 x 2007 Match Butterdragon Hill (although this probably has many more years, it’s singing right now)
Vouvray, Riesling, and more age worthy Cabs dominate my cellar, along with a smattering of Burgundy, vintage Port, and 9 bottles of 1979 Rivesaltes - all of which should easily last another decade or two at the minimum.
Last spring I was rooting around my FIL’s cellar and found two bottles of 2001 Simi Landslide reserve, when I asked about them he said they were dead, we had both bottles the next night and they were wonderful.
You never know till you open em Joe.
'01 was a huge year. I’ve got 11 bottles of '01 Arrowood Reserve Speciale down the cellar that are still quite tannic - more so than their '05 Reserve Speciale. Even had Arrowood’s lowest end Cab called Grand Archer from '01 last year. The bottle had been through 3 summer HVAC failures over the years and was still wonderful. It was fully resolved, still had nice fruit with hardly any spice, and smoooooooooooth!
Most wines I buy personally have a long life ahead and the risk of going OTH is low. that being said, I do have frequently a case or more of odds and ends. Gifts, random drinkers that I never got to. I usually every once in a while have a clear out the cellar night, where I open a number. Usually I don’t subject other people to this. Several bottles get poured down the drain, but there are always surprises–wines from the 70’s or 80’s that were never expected to age but are wonderful. Random domestic Rieslings seem to be the most common surprises. Even ordinary bottlings can age very very well.
I’m holding 2 cases of a wine that was rated 98 by a certain expert who projected the drinking window as 2020 to 2025. It’s been prune juice for 3 years but I’m sure it’ll be stellar in another 5 years. Anybody interested? Give you 20 percent off of what I paid for it.
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