Re-stocking the cellar ... what is missing?

Actually, I tend to find the thing I don't buy enough of is light fresh whites- Macons, sec-tendre Chenin blanc, lower end Gruner Veltliner and Riesling, etc. I probably should have more Champagne, too.

I have a total of 3 Priorats, but I've discovered they don't ring my bells. Most of my small Spanish component is old style Rioja. CT tells me that my cellar is 1/3 Bdx and 1/4 Burg. Overall 72% French, with 9% each Italy and Germany. Not especially balanced, but that's what I like to cellar. Not the same as what I drink, because less expensive wines aren't entered in CT, they don't last that long.

Other than a few cases of Leeuwin Chardonnay and a few bottles of Grange I really don't have any Aussie wines to speak of. I occasionally find a lost bottle or two of D'Arenberg or Hill of Grace. I stopped buying them a few years ago when then started being a bit too homogenized. I am woefully lacking in Italian whites and NZ SB's and I kick myself for not buying more of them. I'm not a big GV drinker but I usually buy a case of Hofer 1L bottles each spring and a mixed case or two of Rose's for summer quaffing.

CT being ... Cellar Tracker? The thought of entering our cellar content in a database is simply ... too tiresome. This way, you find things you didn't know you had - unfortunately, it cuts both ways - you also find that you lack what you thought you had. Such as, didn't we have half a case of Tour du Bon? Apaprently not.

Repeated visits to Alsace and Coche-Bizouard helps us in keeping up to date on whites (even if most of the C-B wines are of the ruminative kind which would do well with another 5-6 years in the cellar, especially now that the oxidation problem appears to be solved).

We like RIojas too. ANOTHER thing we lack. DAMN!

CHeers

Nils

Mine is a mix of high and medium end Cabernets, Zindfandels, Syrah, Pinot Noir from CA and Oregon, Chardonnay, many Sauvignon Blanc from NZ, CA, France, Priorat, Ribiera de Duoro, Rioja and mixed whites from Spain, some Douros from Portugal and Ports from Portugal and US Bourdeaux, Burgundies, Rhone North and South, Chinon, Champagne expensive and inexpensive and sparklers from US, Spain, Italy, no German wines at all since my wife won't drink them, Grüner, no Aussies at all as we have been burnt out on overdone wines. Italian wines have been drunk up and not replaced lately as I am trying to drink things up with an anticipated move and don't want to move more than 100 bottles. I order them by country to find them but keep them in cellar tracker. I have a 550 bottle wine storage unit now that is mostly full.

I was just talking with a friend about how buying wine has taken a lower priority for me, and I'm actually depleting my stock faster than replenishing it. I've also decided that it's a good time to open that expensive bottle I've been saving and have it with leftovers, or some non-occasion.

I've cancelled my wine clubs, too.

I don't know why I'm reacting to the economy. I have a secure job, etc. But, I am cutting back on luxury items, like wine.

Is anyone else?

I know that California wine exports have increased to China by a lot this year. Their industrial age is rewarding them.

Karen

In general, sturdy, ageworthy reds are overrepresented in our cellar. What are underrepresented are Rieslings (as Jean only recently convinced herself that she liked them), Cru Beaujolais (they just disappear too fast! :( ), Burgundy (got in late) and Italian wines (too ignorant for too long). My purchases of the last few years have attempted to rectify the situation, but it's a slow evolution.

Mark Lipton

I am forever short on whites. Loire, Alsace, Burgundy, they just evaporate. Yet they could use aging even more than my reds.

Cannot say that we do. We should, we ought to, we have mortgages to be paid in euros meaning they have gone sky high (since we get our wages in Swedish kronor), and most of the wines we buy are sooner or later paid in euros, or other currency more stable than our meager tin ... I suppose wine still has a high priority chez les Lindgrens ...

Cellar Tracker is quite worth it to me. I buy a lot of 1/2/3/4/5 bottle quantities. Some stored in home cellar, rest at my office. If I'm invited to a 1986 Bdx horizontal, I can offer Gruaud Larose, Meyney, Pape Clément, Rausan-Ségla, Sociando-Mallet, and Talbot w/o needing to strain brain or rummage through cellar. With multiple locations, the list is also helpful at not letting me forget there's a bottle of 2000 Bourgogne that needs to be drunk up. I realize others have different needs and systems, but CT is a lifesaver for me.

I agree. My buying habits are similar as I rarely buy a case or even a half of a case and without cellar tracker I would not know what I had.

Karen wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@x29g2000prf.googlegroups.com:

I now have little "disposable income". I still get ads from auction houses and some wines are dirt cheap. I don't have the money to take advantage of them. My cellar is depleting, but it should last a few more years without replinshment. I wind up having expensive wines with inexpensive foods.

Fred.

I do not have a cellar, so I made a refrigerated wine room out of a small bedroom by adding blown cellulose insulation above the ceiling, glass and foil insulation under the bedroom in a crawl space, and rolls of foil, plastic bubble insulation around all of the walls and on the door. Seals were added to the door. The temperature of the room is controlled using accurate commercial thermostats. A humidifier also is used, but it does not start often except in very dry winter weather.

At one time I just stacked boxes of wine, but this became too much trouble. I installed some racks that are stacked. One type has grids to hold 64 bottles, and the other type is the same size, but has 4 bins which I use for wines that I have in large lots. I once tried to group like wines together, but that required that wines be moved around more than I liked. Now I have a label on each rack module with a letter such as A,B,...,Z,AA . For the racks with grids, a bottle is located by the row and column number of the grid. Thus the location of a bottle of "Old Rot Gut" might be specified as B 5,6. For bins, these are labeled 1 to 4 in a clockwise direction. Thus a bottle of "Old Tom Cat" might be located at G 2 , I use these in my cellar book so that it is easy to find any bottle, unless you make an error. I do have a few other shelve units for things that need to stand up, such as spirits.

Since I have collected wines for many years, I have consumed most of my mistakes and am left with mostly long matured high quality wine. I really don't know how many bottles I have, but likely enough to last the rest of my life. Thus I seldom buy wine except wines with a somewhat limited life that must be replaced from time to time.

Bordeaux now is mainly first growths and a few others that often can be as good as the first growth in some years. I have Bordeauxs from the 40's to 1990. Burgundy now is mainly Grand Crus, and I have examples of most of these. The vintages range from the 1940s to 1990. I also have a few older Rhone reds, Champagne, Loires. Wines from Alsace include Clos Sainte Hune Rieslings and several SGVs.

I very much like top German Rieslings that age well. I am now drinking mainly auslese and above, although I consumed my share of kabinett and spatlese wines while my better wines were maturing. I have many examples ofRiesling BAs and TBAs.

I still have some Italian wines that age well such as some Barolo, Brunello, and Amarone as well as some high quality reds from the south and a few sweet wines. I usually like Italian wines that are made from traditional Italian grapes rather than modern ones using Cabernet Sauvignon and such.

My Hungarian wines are all Tokaji, 5P, 6P, aszu-Essencia , and true Essencia, with 3 examples from the 1800s.

I have many bottles of vintage Madeira, going back to 1827, in Bual, Malmsey Terrantez, Moscatel, Verdelho, Bastardo, and Sercil types.

Vintage ports go back to 1908, but most come from after WWII.

Spanish wines include several Sherry wines, a few old style Rioja wines including Castillo Ygay 1925. I also have a little Vega Sicilia in the 1953 and 1968 vintages.

I drank a lot of Australian wine at one time, but I now only have a few bottles such as Grange a a few very sweet wines.

I still have quite a few California wines that age well from mostly the 1970s to the mid 1990s. I have not bought any top California reds in several years, because many of them I find highly over priced, especially some of the newer cult wines. Some of these may prove to be great wines by imporving with age and keeping well for several decades, but at their price I do not wish to gamble on them, and besides I will be very over mature if some of these prove to be very age worthy. There were several California late harvest Rieslings made in the 1970s that had residual sugar contents of up to 30% and more and that would qualify as BA or TBA if grown in Germany. The best of these are still holding very well. The price for many of these was nearly a steal, because most of the US wine buying public was not used to such rich, sweet wines, and did not buy them. I bought many of these when they first came on the market.

I do have several kinds of spirits. Beside the usual suspects, I finally have been able to find many kinds of eau de Vie that often are not seen in the US. Some of the more unusual ones include Baie de Houx and Eglantine(Gratte Cul). The most difficult thing to find of all has been the Oud Hollandsche Likeur made in the Netherlands, but seldom exported. I now have 18 types of these. These very high quality liqueurs are some of the oldest types still made in small batches, but even in Holland they are made only by a few companies. The only one left in Amsterdam that makes many of them is van Wees. Wees also makes the traditional Zeer Oude Genever aged in wood for 10, 15, and 20 years. I found a bottle of their 15 year old. It is to the bulk Genever produced by some large Dutch companies as a top Bordeaux is to a box wine red.

Karen, I don't view good wine as a luxury item any more than good food. Then again I live in a place where you can drink very well for under 10 EU, if you know where to look. I just received

I must say I think not buying wine to lay down is a false economy, that decent little claret will be only OK on release but after 5 years will make a good drink. In commerce it will be correspondingly more expensive (if you find it at all) so you save money by buying it now.

I'll also say that I always watch my wine spending and will only rarely pass say 30 EU on a bottle.

Glad to hear you have a secure job, now _that's_ not chopped liver!

-E

Let's all have a party at your house. You need help drinking all of that wine. I'll bring snacks.

Karen

Yeah! I can bring Swedish crisp bread!

Nils

Let me explain what the ambassador means. We folks in the temperate zone think that swedish crisp bread is a 5" cracker-like disc of compressed organic packaging material that comes in cylindrical boxes marked Wasa all over them, and suggesting on the cover picture that these devices should definitely be augmented with some real food on top (strawberries, cucumber, paté). WRONG.

Swedish crisp bread is a 15" disc of wonderfully crispy nice bread, it tastes good and deserves our attention.

There.

... and it is quite good with smoked salmon.

Interesting thread

what is it about German wines, I have about 4 in my cellar according to CT and one alsace, yet claret and white burgundy are really over represented. German rieslings are great value despite the slide of pound against Euro.

are we all in the same boat re money, just had a letter from my bank saying my easy access account is now earning 0.5%, might as well spend it on wine.

JT

You are lucky they are not charging you 0.5% for the bother of keeping your pounds in a vault... :-)

OT interesting question: How come when banks go under, those who had savings lose them, but those who borrowed money still have to pay the loan back? Is this not a double standard?