The Auswine Forum

Hi all,

A topic of current relevance to myself. Having recently had number 2, and the boss currently on domestic duties, the cash flow has reduced somewhat. Just interested to see what the typical approach is in this case. I have come up with a reduced list of mailing lists that I want to buy from, and will not pull the wallet out inside a store ... At least this is my current official theory . Any other practical approaches being taken?

Geoff

My mate John Davis aka The Meat Pie King Of SA has a great solution. Rents his teenage daughter out for medical research.

Well thats what he tells his friends.

Hi Geoff.

I never thought it could happen to me but.............was made redundant in 02.

Collecting almost totally dried up but did buy what I thought was money in the bank if I couldn't find re-employment.

Rockford 98 Basket Press magnums.

I didn't take up allocations such as Wendouree which was heart breaking. Didn't have room in the cellar.

In no way a wine investor and wouldn't betray mailing list priviledge. The cold and hard facts of a post-Sept 11 world did dictate I only buy what in an emergency, minus auction charges, was back to money in the bank.

Interesting, when you are hard faced about it, few Australian wines will see their retail prices recovered at auction.

Was good for the spirit collecting a few magnums while unemployed!

Flogged some excess "liquid" fr the cellar - Money fr wines goes back to wines.

Rob a bank

Why not skip the middle man and just rob the local cellar
(Not that I condone this kind of behaviour )
Cheers
Popov

Seriously. It's not that important to buy wine. It's just a thing you enjoy, but it isn't <i>important</i>. We went through this about a year and a half ago, when serious school fees hit, at about the same time as the IT industry plummetted, and we had to prioritise. I basically stopped buying wine on any large scale about then.

Here's the sort of thinking that what works for me :

1. It's just wine, no big deal, just a thing. My spouse not murdering me is far more important to my happiness than adding more wine to the cellar.

2. The cellar has enough wine to last me for at least x years, so a short wine moratorium is going to make no difference whatsoever. In fact, it will give me a chance to drink all those wines that are ready before they all fall over the hill.

3. I am going to save a small fortune, $x over the next year.

4. If it's at all a problem five years from now, I can fix it then. If I have more money then, I'll just backfill the cellar at auction. If not, then it's just as well I didn't spend any more now !

5. Not buying wine means I won't be obsessively checking Auswine every 10 minutes, which in turn means I might actually get something done with my life.

6. There is no such thing as the "greatest vintage ever". At most there could be such a thing as the "greatest vintage to date". But there will ALWAYS be another great vintage and there will ALWAYS be a BETTER vintage. And usually "greatest vintage ever" means that there's stacks of the wine around if you decide to fill the gap at auction at a later date.

7. Here's the clincher, buying more than we actually need/obsessively collecting is "greed", whether we care to call it that or not, and it can be soul destroying. Every now and then it does our psyche good to just stop for a while.

Forgive me if this is all a bit heavy, but I really have found that if you want to buy less, it has to matter less.

Cheers, Celia

Celia, that is the most valuable piece of advice I have read on this forum, so far. Seriously! Thank god I read your post one day after I faxed my order through to Dry River!... "hic"...otherwise I may never have done it, Colin.

Colin Rule wrote:Celia, that is the most valuable piece of advice I have read on this forum, so far. Seriously! Thank god I read your post one day after I faxed my order through to Dry River!... "hic"...otherwise I may never have done it, Colin.

Well, of course the rules are different if you're ordering Dry River....

Celia

Just a note to say I totally agree with PLCB.

"Hello my name is David and I used to be a compulsive wine buyer"

I have been buying wine seriously since 1990 and peaked about 2 yrs ago. I just had to buy everything, well not everything, but anything that was considered a "must have" and was a style a liked (ie, no Hunter) . This wasn't helped by the fact that I could get stuff at wholesale - a dangerous thing. Well at the start of this year I went cold turkey and I would say I have bought between 3 and 4 cases of wine this year. At first it was difficult as I have been buying from the same mailers for years now, but now it is no biggie, in fact it is very satisfying to have beaten the addiction.

I still like a good drop - just now know I don't have top own them all.

Now I just have to halve the cellar size and the equilibrium will be restored.

Hi David,

If you are in Nu Jorsie and your cellar is in Oz it will be hard to halve it but send over the keys and I will try and help.

My cellar underwent a huge increase with the 96 and 98 vintages but it has reduced in size a bit over the last couple of years. I have bought 223 bottles this year but have flogged off about 100 that I didn't like so the status quo is being maintained.

It hard to pass up on those "i must have wines" but once you do it a few times it becomes easier and easier.

PLCB wrote:Seriously. It's not that important to buy wine. It's just a thing you enjoy, but it isn't <i>important</i>. We went through this about a year and a half ago, when serious school fees hit, at about the same time as the IT industry plummetted, and we had to prioritise. I basically stopped buying wine on any large scale about then.

Here's the sort of thinking that what works for me :

... snip ...

Forgive me if this is all a bit heavy, but I really have found that if you want to buy less, it has to matter less.

Cheers, Celia

These are wise words indeed they are. Thanks Cee.

I find this method best

1. Buy less wine

Easy. Its not the end of the world. It's only a drink.

Feel miserable and guilty now! Will dump the cellar and eat bread and butter sanwiches!

Coming from NZ Craig, it would only be a drink too!

So Celia, you don't want to know next time I have some excess old reds going at the right price due to past compulsive buying?

I guess I've been pretty lucky, in 18 years working on contract I've only had 2 weeks of unplanned "holidays". The last 5 years has seen me build up the cellar stocks in preparation for retirement. I'm sure there will be some excess there that matures before I'm able to drink it or just doesn't develop the way I expect, they will be sold to friends or go to auction to fund some of the new purchases that my retirement budget may not always stretch to.

I guess that makes my strategy one of 'be prepared' - buy as much as you can afford of the good vintages and be happy to drink those if leaner times arrive. (I was never a boy scout though).