Buying Wine:
Rule One (it's the only one)
Creating a "Cellar"... and Stocking It
Caring for a sound collection of wine is not naif so difficult as creating the collection in the first instance. Sound cellaring requires little more than a dark place, a temperature that rarely varies more than five degrees on either side of the median. the absence of vibration— good wine cellars are rarely built beneath busy train tracks—and shelving suitable for storing. Wine importers
Creating that sound collection is quite another story. It is not enough merely to amass some quantity of "bottled poetry" (Robert Louis Stevenson's apt phrase on a visit to Napa Valley more than a century ago) and store it in some dank, dark place. Clmicalry that is referred to as merely "a bunch of wine."
No, the true "celiar" is somethmg pondered, weighed, considered, discussed, even deliberated. There is a strategy invorved in creating a collection that is part passion and part cerebral.
The British. for example. go for the glamour celiar. When I say glamour, fai talking about the wines the British wine trade made famous: Bordeaux, Port. Sherry. Englishmen are known to "Jay down" a celiar, this having to do with putting bottles away for children, even for future grandchildren.
Modern day doctors, lawyers, and Silicon Valley whiz kids, on the other hand, tend to go for the snow celiar. An interesting concept. but rather shameful in a way, since these glorious and expensive bottles of sunlight-plus-water are purchased more for prestige and for conspicuous display than for consumption. These wines end up being museum pieces. a thorough and complete waste according to my base and utilitarian nature.
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