In this piece I am going to talk about issues of why, where, what, how, and budget of building your wine cellar. I hope I can give members of FOV some food for thought about building their cellars.
WHY DO YOU NEED A WINE CELLAR
Majority of the wines sold are consumed within hours or days of the purchase. Consumers doing this are missing some of the better part of wine enjoyment in my opinion. Most red wines can use a few years of cellaring to improve and mature for better enjoyment. Buying matured red wines are more expansive than buying younger wines and let them mature in your own cellar.
Also, even if you do not mind spending more for matured wines, you may have difficulties locating them.
WHAT WINES ARE WORTH CELLARING
Not all wines are worth cellaring. Most white wines are made to be enjoy when they are young and fresh. White wines worth cellaring and will improve with time include sweet white wines, white Burgundy, and wines made with the Reisling grape.
Most red wines will improve with some cellaring. Reds which will improve and mature over long period of time include Bordeaux, Burgundy, Barolo, Brunello, Chianti, most Spanish reds, California reds with Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlots.
Some well made examples can age as long as ten to twenty years.
WHERE IS THE BEST PLACE FOR YOUR CELLAR
If you have a basement, a corner which is cold, quiet, dark and without vibration will be the ideal place for your cellar. If you don’t have a basement, a dark closet will not be a bad place to start. Just make sure the sun does not get to shine directly on your bottles and the temperature stays relatively stable and does not swing from warm to cold and back frequently. The wines should be laying down such that the cork is wetted by the wine.
Do you need refrigeration? The ideal cellar should be around 12C to 14C. However, if the temperature is stable and no higher than 24C and you are just starting a cellar, I will not worry too much unless you are collecting Grand Cru Classe Bordeaux!
I would save the money for wine buying instead of spending on wine refrigerator or cabinet.
WINE BUYING BUDGET AND BUYING STRATEGY
One thing I learned over the years is to split your budget into buying both wines for current consumption and wines you want to cellar for future enjoyment. You need both, otherwise you will find yourself looking for wines to drink and start popping your cellaring wines too early. How much of a split is up to you and your drinking habit. Even if you buy one bottle for cellaring to every nine bottles you buy for current consumption, you will still be able to build up a long-term cellar over time.
One advice is never to buy a single bottle for long term cellaring. My rule of thumb is to buy multiples of at least three. With at least three bottles of the same wine, you will be able to pop one when the drinking window is approaching to gauge if the wine is ready and plan when to enjoy the other two. It also is an insurance against cork taint.
DRINKING WINDOWS – HOW LONG TO HOLD THEM AND WHEN TO ENJOY THEM
So now you have a cellar. When is the ideal time for drinking your cellaring treasures? Here is some of my own experience.
Chianti Classico: most wines made from Sangiovese grapes will be into perfect drinking window between seven to twelve years.
Burgundy: Seven to twelve years. Exceptional ones (Premier and Grand Cru classes) can go further into twenty years.
Bordeaux: Ten years to twenty years. Most Cru Classes can go beyond twenty years. (I recently enjoyed four 1999s from my cellar (1999 Leoville Las Cases, 1999 Gruaud La Rose, 1999 Clerc Minon, 1999 Chateau Kiwan) with a few friends. They were all over 24 years old but still fabulous and very enjoyable.
Brunello: Seven to Fifteen years.
Barolo: Old Barolos used to be not drinkable until at least over 25 years. But they have gone through stylistic changes in the recent past. They are now enjoyable form seven years or so onwards and can last into their twenties.
Beaujolais: Beaujolais are made for early drinking. But I found Cru Beaujolais can improve and be more enjoyable from three years onwards.
Spanish reds: Most Spanish reds are released late when ready to drink but they can be cellared for at least another ten years upon release.
ORGANIZATION AND HOW TO KEEP TRACK OF WHAT YOU HAVE IN THE CELLAR
Your cellar started with perhaps from twenty or so bottles may eventually grew to hundreds. At first, they were probably all mixed together in a few wine boxes. Eventually, you may start putting them on shelves in a rack and then adding different racks.
This works so that you are organized, and the wines can be located very quickly. But you are probably relying on your memory to keep track of everything.
Now you have another problem. You may have a rack that held all your French wines, and another rack with your Italian wines and so on so forth. You start to get confused as to what you have and more importantly, where is the wine you want to drink tonight!
So, you start using a pad or notebook to record the wines and where they are located. But now another problem starts to get you. You may have a new problem: you drank twenty bottles of French wines but have newly bought thirty bottles of Italian for cellaring. But the rack of Italian wines has no empty slot for these wines and the only empty slots you have are over at your French wine rack. What is one to do?
These are all problems I have experienced. I finally come to the conclusion that the only sane way to manage, organize and keep good records for my cellar is to use a database. I organized the racks, shelves and slots by letters and numbers.
For example, a slot in rack I, shelf 2 and first slot from the right is assigned an address as I-2-1. The next slot in the rack will be I-2-2 and so. Every bottle which comes into the cellar is recorded in a database such as Microsoft Access. The record of the wine includes, vintage, red or white, country, region of origin, name of the wine, producer, and more importantly the address I put it into (the slot address).
The beauty of database is I can now quickly ask the database to search for wines using criteria such as by vintage, or by country and region, or by producer. I can quickly locate where a particular wine is in the cellar.
Of course, you must be discipline enough to remove a wine from the database once you consumed the wine and the address is now open for a new entrant into the database. I can use the database to move consumed wines to another table I call Drink Record. Now I know when a particular wine was consumed, and even with tasting notes and what dinner I had with the wine. All well organized!
If you are not comfortable with a database, paper record will still work with the address system above. You just would not be able to quickly get reports for sorting and listing.
I hope this helps you in starting, organizing or improve your wine cellar. Enjoy!
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