Increase your bottle spend to 3-5x. You’ll buy far less bottles that are far better. Plus, you’ll discover that your current stash sucks in comparison, so it’ll eliminate the need to buy more of them.
Don’t be the guy who flexes with DRC but still buys bourgogne rouge.
On a much smaller level, one thing that would help is to give yourself a mandatory waiting period, as though you were buying a pistol in a blue state or something.
Whenever you are going to to buy, make yourself wait two days or something before you go click buy. You’ll be amazed how many of them don’t seem as essential by that time.
Develop a poor palate.
This.
“Meh…” wines will ruin you.
Either go low, or go high.
Stay the heck away from the middle ground - not only will it bankrupt you, but it will ruin you psychologically [when, five or ten years from now, you realize that you can’t get excited about anything in your possession, and then the thought of all that foregone Time Value of Money slaps you upside the head].
Unless you have completely down the burgundy rabbits hole, from which there’s no coming back, buy quality age worthy wine from ALL the regions you enjoy. I’ve turned my back on areas I’ve loved drinking, only to come back with a new vigor 5 years later, and glad to know I have some older selections in the cellar.
Take your time. There is always more mine. Your bigger regrets will be the wines you buy and don’t really like versus the offers you passed on.
At least until the recent price runup, there have been a lot of $30-60 wines you could get that turned fantastic with age. Some recent wonderful wines I have had with an original purchase price of $50/bottle or under – 2004 Leoville Barton, 1998 Quinault l’Enclos, 1989 Meyney. Had those just in the last couple of months. But you need to know what you’re doing, nothing worse than shelling out a ton of money on lots of bottles that don’t excite you.
Conversely, you can “go high” and get expensive wines that just aren’t that great, especially in Burgundy but also elsewhere.
In the end there is no substitute for knowing what you are getting.
In terms of advice, lots of good advice in this thread. I would suggest just stopping buying for a while to break the habit. It’s critical to get comfortable with not buying on impulse, and a break from buying can help with that.
I’m definitely in the buy fewer bottles that are better camp
This is key. I maintain a list of what I’d like to acquire, rebalance it regularly, and stick to it. It takes the appearance of a screaming deal or a rare wine to move me off it. Really there’s two sub-lists - one to try and one to buy in higher quantity
I don’t know about holding down on acquisitions, but I find Nathan’s advice about quality and price to be almost the opposite of the case. Although many very good wines cost $100 and more, the biggest uptick in quality is between the prices of $30 and $80 (with most being between $30 and $60). Over that, you are spending more and more to get less and less and sometimes spending more to get wine I at least genuinely wouldn’t want to drink (the most spoofed and manipulated wines are often the more expensive ones). The obvious exception is the case of buying some old wines. And in any case, if one refused to buy in that price range, I can think of any number of wines that are distinctive and great that one would miss out on (Baudry, Sociando Mallet, Charvin, Pegau, Guillaume Gilles, one could go on).
Find a couple of friends with huge cellars. Makes your acquisitions look paltry by comparison.
put together a spreadsheet with what you wish to acquire
Do people actually do this?
Why?
Seems like it would work only if you have limited experience, where it’s easy to pick two out of the six things you know. But who buys wine this way? What if you come across something interesting that you haven’t thought of? And it’s at a great price. Not on the list so you don’t buy it?
.
This is great advice that worked well for me. Often the urge passed by the next morning, after sleeping on it and freed from the disinhibition of the previous evening’s glass or two. Also:
Delete all the retailer emails without opening.
Drop off most or all winery mailing lists.
Keep CellarTracker open and take a look at how many similar bottles you already own whenever you get the itch.
Is this what a 12 step meeting sounds like?
If I had to start over I would limit the number of mailing lists I buy from and focus on back filling with more wine I can drink now. There’s plenty of reasonably priced bottles available for both cellaring and drinking immediately. Once you get your cellar out of balance and need a locker, yeah that’s when its all downhill for your budget.
Oh yeah, just when I set a budget, someone posts great Champagne deals so budget goes bye bye.
I’ll PM you some tips on January 26 and 27.
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This has happened to me way too many times.
My tip, just like many before me, GET OFF THE SITE. Budgets don’t exist here.
I still rue the day I acceded to Wifey’s demand that I split out wine from groceries in Quicken.
Wait for Donald to slap a 100% duty… You’ll spend the same amount but your wife will believe you are on a budget when you tell her about the quantity reduction… plus all these s…t 25$ bottles will cost you the 50$ sweetspot where people say you get best value for money!..