I am taking a page from Andy’s Wine Press Northwest blog. I really enjoyed reading about what is in his (very impressive) cellar. I have seen it and also been very happy there is a door on it as my toddler runs back to their cellar room at 40 mph.
Our cellar is a stack of styrofoam lined boxes with inserts for wine bottles. We put the bottles in upside down and hope that the styrofoam saves the wine from serious temperature fluctuations. Our house is heated and air conditioned, the wines should (in theory) be maintained at 70F, which is warm for a cellar. But then again I don’t collect wines as trophies or with the hopes of resale. We collect the wines we like to drink and also to experiment – will this very tannic $10 red age well? If it doesn’t, well then it was a $10 experiment. We are scientists you know.
This storage method isn’t very conducive to showing off our wines. Truthfully? It is a pain in the rear to access. A series of boxes stacked in the guest room unlabelled… bet my guests never knew they were sleeping with their heads two feet from our wine collection. Or maybe the reason they all sleep so well at my house should be further investigated... But this method also keeps us from delving into our “savers” too often and is also toddler proof.
AB and I started collecting wine while we lived in Reno and had an easy three hour drive to Napa and Sonoma where we learned about wine and acquired the taste. Our goal was to always buy at least two, if not three of a wine we liked. One to have now, one to put away. Occasionally when we felt rich we would buy a case, but that means our “cellar” is a lot of single bottles (because we so rarely “felt rich”). I was a graduate student after all.
AB and I are mostly red wine fans. We like big, bold red wines, particularly Zinfandel (which you rarely find up here in Washington), Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc and well crafted Meritages (someday I will rhyme it with heritage…) or other red blends.
Our “collection” started with the 1996 Franciscan Magnificat from Napa Valley. It was a wonderful California Meritage that we collected through the 1999, or maybe 2000 vintage. It dropped off our radar after moving to Washington but we still have a few bottles of each vintage. I did pick up a few bottles of it at Costco here early this past year and was honestly unimpressed. In fact, I am not sure we even put the other bottle in our collection.
One of our next collector wines was one of Ravenswood appellation specific zins. We became huge Ravenswood fans while in Reno and still are. It is one of the few Calfornia wines we still purchase regularly. We served many of their wines at our wedding when they gave us such stellar deals at the winery. (No joke, this is the single friendliest winery ever.) We used to say that it was our house wine. We bought a case of 1997, put it away and over the last eight or so years have consumed that case. We were highly impressed with how this $12 wine changed over the years. Our last bottle met an untimely demise about 8 months ago. I had brought the bottle out for a steak dinner, AB decided the meal wasn’t really worthy of our last bottle and so instead of putting it back in the “cellar”, I stuck it in our wine rack. About a week later when we decided to open a bottle with pizza I grabbed it, mistaking it for one of the Ravenswood vintners blend zins from Costco and popped the sucker open. (Envision squeals of “it was an accident” a la Phantom of the Opera.) Yes, our bottle that wasn’t worthy of the steak dinner was to be paired with a Hawaiian pizza from Pizza Hut.
So the above paragraph fits into the category of “what isn’t in my cellar”. Back to the topic at hand of what IS in my wine cellar... right now, 40 bottles.
A few California hold-outs remain in our cellar. Specifically a few zinfandels from the Sierra Foothills. Perry Creek zin is one of my favorites, ZinMan. And I probably really just like it because my dad’s name is Perry.
Our “cellar” since moving to Washington has been not surprisingly dominated by Pacific Northwest wines. Mostly Columbia Valley wines with a few appellation specific and a number of individual bottles of Walla Walla wines. I am not a student any longer and I still can’t afford more than single bottles of the wines from that region we like. Among wines from this region we have eight Meritages, seven Syrahs, and five Cabernet Sauvignons. The remainders are miscellaneous varietals such as Cabernet Franc, Merlot, Pinot Noir, Chardonney, a few sparklers, a few Rieslings, a Gewurztraminer, and an Ehrenfelser. And even more amazing to me is that every single one of these wines is from a different winery, many are very small, little known places.
Last there is a bottle of 1995 Prager Royal Escort Port that we purchased before we married. This was a fabulous port that AB and I nearly broke the bank in purchasing back about 1998 at $50 a bottle. We swore we would open it at our wedding. Then we swore we would open it when our first child was born. Wow, if it wasn’t opened for either of those events when will it be opened? Our biggest problem with opening it has been that it isn’t a half bottle. It is a full 750 mL. And while I know that port keeps longer than wine, we need more people to indulge in it with us. Well guess what… we are now surrounded by wine loving and appreciating friends. I think its days are numbered. At minimum, of course, it has at least 19 more weeks of life to enjoy.
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