Levet is also my biggest vertical in the northern Rhône, back to 2004 (though cellar tracker is telling me I’m somehow missing 2012?!?). For Bordeaux it’s pichon Lalande, though it’s all older - I don’t buy young Bordeaux. In burgundy it’s Fourrier.
I was going to ask this same question. Doesn’t the vertical discourage you from opening the bottles, unless you have a vertical with large numbers of the vintages?
And does everyone mean an uninterrupted string of vintage, or just how many vintages of something you have? I had always assumed it meant the former, but I’m not sure if everyone else understands it that way.
I as well. At what point do you start opening the older bottles in the vertical? Sure, some of these mentioned are probably still aging well, but at some point . . . (and I confess I have a couple of wines with about 10 years in a row that I probably just need to pull the cork on the oldest bottles).
I don’t necessarily think a vertical has to be a consecutive string of vintages. And, these are mostly from buying a wine on release without consideration for vintage, mostly because I really like them almost all years. I don’t “chase” down missing bottles to fill in gaps, although I can see the allure. It’s fun to taste through a lineup of the same wines and note differences in vintage conditions and how they affect the wines.
5 years of Belle Pente Murto Pinot Noir (2010 - 2014)
5 years of Woodward Canyon Artist Series Cab (2010 - 2017, missing '14-'16)
5 years of Di Costanzo Farella Vinyeard Cab (2013 - 2017)
It’s a good question. I have a couple very small verticals, but it’s mostly just because I really enjoy the wines so I buy them each year. But I think unless your plan is to sell them as a set, then the healthiest view is to either start planning the party where you’ll invite us all over to taste them together or start pulling them and not caring!
I don’t set out to build verticals for the sake of having “a vertical,” and I certainly don’t avoid drinking the bottles that are ready for purposes of preserving an unbroken vertical. I plan on opening every bottle I have, at some point. But, of course, I do set out to buy my favorites every year, or almost every year, except when they (like Chave, Giacosa, Chevillon, Montebello, and too many others to name) increase too much in price and I have to move on to other alternatives to stay within the budget.
As for the original question of which wine do I have in the most vintages, it currently looks like:
Of these, I’m only still buying Beau, Geezer, Rancia, L-M, and LeoB. The others have priced me out (or in the case of Taylor I’ve stopped buying due to accumulating my lifetime supply). And among the ones I’m still buying, at least the Geezer I don’t expect to grow from here, as I am basically at equilibrium - drinking the oldest vintage in the cellar every year, and replacing it with the new release.