The first house D’Aun and I bought was a rickety old home built in 1913 that had a most un-californian feature: a basement. After our first wine experience in Bordeaux I built a small rack and collected my first bottles of wine. Eventually we moved and lost that fun basement, but I still kept collecting.
A few years ago the kids moved out and we became an empty nest. Our home had a laundry room in the most ridiculous place — near the dining room in the front of the house. I reasoned that with the kids gone we didn’t need a laundry room and that we should convert it to a wine cellar. D’Aun didn’t quite buy the argument … but agreed that relocating the laundry room made a lot of sense. And thus we built a walk-in wine cellar that can hold 800 bottles. Okay, to be completely honest, it was her idea to move the laundry room. A good idea.
The former laundry room.
Oh, and note that I said, “can hold.” I’m resisting my father-in-law’s advice to fill it with Two Buck Chuck. It currently has 420 bottles. I’m looking forward to a bottle with dinner tonight … so it will drop to 419. But who’s counting?
Well, actually, I’m counting. I even have a spreadsheet that tracks what we have, when or why we bought it, what we thought of it when we tasted it, etc. Yes, I admit, I’m a geek.
The most valuable bottle is a 1982 Chateau Mouton Rothschild that we purchased for $30 in 1985. It’s worth a lot more today, though an exact price is hard to pinpoint. Most of the wines in the cellar are worth $15 to $45. Anything less gets drunk pretty fast, and anything more is too pricey to collect in large quantities.
There are several wines that are not really meant to be drunk. For instance, there’s the 1993 Poggio alla Badiola from Italy that Gordon Aeschliman gave me under the promise that I should never drink it because “unopened it represents all the potential we can hope for.” Leave it to my poet friend. And the 2002 Ula Ula Waina that we made ourselves … it tastes like battery acid so those bottles are sure to remain unopened. I wrote about that experience in my post about Suburban Day Laborers.
The oldest bottle is a 1958 Porto Krohn Colheita that D’Aun and I will enjoy on our 60th birthdays. The wine that will last the longest is the 1982 Chateau Mouton Rothschild that I mentioned earlier; experts say it will be good until 2075. I doubt I’ll be around but I hope Rachel and Jedd enjoy it.
Inside the wine cellar.
Speaking of those two, we purchased wines in their birth years with the aim of opening them on their 21st birthday. But the ’83’s were mostly past their prime by Rachel’s 21st birthday. By contrast, the ’86’s were fantastic … but they are so valuable that Jedd and the rest of us get squeamish about drinking them! We also have a lot from ’81, the year D’Aun and I married, but they too are mostly past their prime.
Probably 75% of the wines are from California, but there are a wide range from other parts of the world. Besides the wines I’ve already mentioned, the most common names in the cellar includes Heitz, Cain, Turley, Darioush, Chateau Palmer, Justin, Mi Sueno (my favorite), Spottswoode, Tofanelli, Duckhorn, Twomey, Caymus (my favorite if you aren’t on a budget), Paul Hobbs, and Robert Biale. There are dozens more, but those would be the most recognizable and among my favorites.
It should be noted that the wine is slowly being displaced by olive oil. But that’s okay, because D’Aun is collecting some excellent stuff in her ongoing effort to improve D’Oliva Olive Oil.
Mi favorito.
If you are looking for bargain wines, check out my nickel sale story here. I update it from time to time. If you want to read what I like or dislike in broad terms, check out my uncorked thoughts home page and you’ll also see several links at the bottom. And if you want very specific comments as I taste different wines, you can follow my tasting adventures on Twitter at @uncorkedthought.