When I was in college, the closest self-storage wine locker was located two and a half hours south of town. I didn’t go to school in an especially small city, and my college town had a thriving wine culture, so this fact always surprised me. To pick up or drop off bottles, I would have…
I have a stockpile of halogen light bulbs stacked in my pantry. Most of the time, my house is filled with LEDs, but in the winter, when temperatures drop, I switch out my LEDs for a month or two to enjoy the warm glow of my halogens. Believe it or not, I’ve noticed that I…
Having a home cellar can be a form of torture for those of us who love drinking wine. It takes a lot of willpower to leave that bottle of Bouchard Pere & Fils where it is, knowing that it’s sitting on the shelf just waiting for someone to uncork it. That’s one reason I only…
Years ago, I took a tour of a California winery with a few friends. Our guide took us through the gem of the estate: a carpeted wine cellar hidden away behind the kitchen. In the beginning of the tour, our group was loud and boisterous, but the moment we stepped inside that cellar, the mood…
A few months ago, I went to a Pinot Noir tasting and met a few budding wine collectors. They’d only been collecting wine for a handful of years, and they were loving every second of it–that is, until we started talking about wine storage. One of the collectors told the group that he’d just finished…
I’ve known collectors who will spend hundreds or even thousands of dollars on elaborate wine storage racks that look like they belong in an art museum rather than a cellar. Maybe you’ve thought about buying one of these racks–if so, you may want to rethink your decision. Although many of these racks are beautiful and…
MENTIONED IN THIS POST: Languedoc-Roussillon California Alsace Getting wine experts to agree on what temperature you should store wine at is like pulling teeth. I know one collector who has his cellar dialed to a precise 55 degrees at all times, and is convinced his bottles will spoil if the temperature spikes by even 5…
A family friend has one of the most elaborate home wine cellars I’ve ever seen. His Florida home boasts three levels of wine shelves, gorgeous oak furniture, and special glass display cases for his many Jeroboams and Magnums. Although his home cellar is a work of art, it’s not without risks. Once, during a rowdy…
There’s something about the heat of the summer that makes me want to go on a wine shopping spree. By the time July or August rolls around, it’s usually been months since I invested heavily in wine for my collection. I’ll spend all spring preparing for the arrival of my back-ordered allocations, but once those…
There’s a common saying among barbecue experts, “If you’re looking, you’re not cooking.” The idea is that the more you peek under the barbecue lid, the longer it takes for your food to cook. Yet this cliche applies to your wine collection too; the more you fidget with your bottles, the less opportunity they have…
Portland-based collector Dave Smith used to be the proud owner of an almost mythical Melchizedek Champagne bottle, which held a whopping 30 liters of wine. Only 20 of these large-format bottles are made every year, so you can imagine Smith’s shock and disappointment when, one day, his Melchizedek exploded. No one knows for sure why…
What if you bought tens of thousands of dollars worth of wine at an auction, only to discover that a significant number of the bottles were fake? This is exactly what happened to one wine collector who bought dozens of bottles of decades-old Burgundy. The collector was curious whether all of the wines in the…