Cellar musings

I rarely write “wine posts”, as opposed to “data posts”, in the sense that I usually write about the wine-data aspects of the wine industry, rather than about the personal aspects of wine. Today, I though that I might do the latter, just for a change.

In some ways, this is in response to Tom Maresca’s current musings on Desert islands, fantasy cellars, and other such vinous misdirections. He is on the right track, as usual, but I don’t agree with everything Tom has to say; and hence my own musings here about wine cellars.

I have never had any aspirations to have a wine cellar, although my current abode does have a subterranean storeroom, and there is wine in it. Indeed, there are quite a few bottles, either in it, or somewhere else around the house. The same cellar also has my wife’s wine-making equipment, for making fruit wines, the current fruit wines themselves (she makes a pretty good gooseberry wine), and the results of her jam and jelly making activities.

The only reason for me having a cellar is the same as Tom’s — I cannot afford mature wine, so I prefer to buy it young and mature it myself. It does not take many years of storage to turn a good wine into a very good one. If my wife and I drink one matured wine per week, then I need 4 dozen wines per year, which leads to a simple calculation about how many wines I need in storage.

The cellar collection is not a fantasy one, by any means, nor one for a desert island. It is simply a bunch of wines that I have accumulated over the years, either as recommendations from someone else, the current vintages of wines I like, or wines I have picked up when traveling. This sounds pretty standard, to me.

What is not standard is the arrangement of the stored wines. I have always stored them the same way, for all of the past 30 years. This started as a necessity, when the bottles were in boxes in the bottom of a wardrobe or cupboard. The only way I could access anything was to have all of the wines of the same maturity in the same box. That is, the box was labeled with the year in which the contents should be consumed — not the place of origin, or the style of wine, but simply the time when I planned to drink them. I have kept things that way, although no longer out of necessity.

So, every January 1st I bring out into the dining room all of the bottles for the coming year. What a treasure trove it is, and what a lovely surprise to find out what I have! Wines I have been looking forward to; wines that I have forgotten, but can now reminisce about buying — where and when and why; and wines that I have no recollection of ever acquiring, let alone why I did so. Vinously, this is definitely the best day of the year.

From then on throughout the year, I dig into this upstairs part of the collection — the drink-now part of the cellar — every time I want a mature wine. This is, of course, supplemented by the drink-now wines that I buy during the remainder of the year, such as rosés, fruity whites and young reds. Mature wines are best, but they should not be the sole diet of a wine drinker.

The other thing that seems to be odd for most wine collectors is that I rarely buy more than one bottle of any given wine. To me, there are simply too many interesting wines on this planet for me to want to repeat myself. Sure, I miss out on following the development of particular wines, which seems to be so fascinating to other people; but, instead, I get to explore a far greater part of the wine world than do most people. For the same number of bucks, I can travel further in the wine world than I could if I bought six of everything.

The wines themselves are mostly from Australia and the European Union. Australia is where I first found out about wine, and is therefore the vinous world I know best. The EU is where I have lived for nigh on 20 years now, and therefore is the one I have learned about most recently.

At one stage I started to focus on the wines of Sicily, just before everyone else jumped on the bandwagon. Now, everyone knows about the brilliant wines from Mt Etna, which can challenge the produce of Burgundy, the fortified wines of Marsala, which give the wines of Jerez a run for their money, and the grapes such as Nero d'Avola and Nocera that winemakers around the world are eyeing as potential saviors in response to climate change. Getting there before the crowd is my only claim to vinous prescience.

This leads to Tom Maresca’s “question anyone knowledgeable about wine is constantly asked: What’s your favorite wine?” To which he claims “the only sensible answer is: The one I’m drinking right now.” I doubt this. The one I am drinking now may be a mistake, either because it is no good, or because I am drinking it with inappropriate food. For me, my favorite wine is the next one, even though I do not yet know what it will be.

I entirely agree, however, when Tom whispers in our collective ears: “Let me let you in on a nasty little wine world secret: Fabled wines can disappoint just as readily and just as often as more ordinary ones.” You better believe it! First Growth Bordeaux is rarely worth the money, based on my experience, and neither are the top wines of Australia or the USA.

Nor, of course, are older wines necessarily any better than their younger selves. There was a time, not that long ago, when it was possible to get Barolo wines from the late 1950s for not too much money, if you searched carefully on eBay (wine is permitted on eBay throughout western Europe). Some of them were very good, fortunately. However, Tom’s recommendation to “focus more realistically on wines that can give you nearer-term pleasure” is also the best advice I could give.

Besides, we need to store a few wines now, because who knows what wines climate change will have us drinking in a few years time. I have not seen this point made before; but in a changing world, we need to preserve a bit of the past.