When do the bottles in the wardrobe go to a cellar?

[via collins]

Following on Julio in NY's topic of "how many bottles?", I'd be curious to know what was the tipping point for readers here that meant the household was no longer the best place to store wine. I've just recently committed my wines to proper storage, and I'm sleeping a whole lot better. So, managed storage - how's your experience?

[tim1210]

I moved into managed storage when i bought my first case that i wanted to cellar for a significant period of time. Prior to that I was only keeping two dozen or so that realistically were going to be drunk within a year anyway. Perhaps in retrospect I may have jumped in a little early but in the following 3 years or so my cellar has grown to around 300 bottles: mostly of stuff that I'm planning to keep long term. I get much peace of mind from the cellar conditions

[Julio G]

Julio is actually of London currently... although he would love to be of NY one day. The collection is all back in the home town - Perth.

The 300 milestone made me question my storage and I have managed to persuade the the better half to allow me to purchase a wine fridge - going for the Peltier 430. With top wines from the likes of Cullen, Moss Wood, Picardy, Woodlands, Mt Langi, Petaluma and Leeuwin from Oz and with classed growths from Bordeaux, German Riesling and even a bit of Grand cru Burgundy creeping in, it was time to bite the bullet on proper storage. I didn't look into off site storage... it may well be cheaper.

[monghead]

For me, it was when I was given a bottle of '96 Grange on release. I wanted to keep it well, so a mixed case of the better stuff at that time went in with the Grange into an off-site managed cellar. One thing led to another, and now we have an off-site, self access vault with a 100 case capacity in a purpose built facility. One day, the home will have a dedicated cellar, and I will be aiming for a 200 to 250 case capacity...

[rooman]

I moved everything into a professional wine storage after the temperature in the appartment hit 40c one year. I still have a doubt over some of my 98 vintage though the most recent examples being the Seppelts St Peters appear to holding up superbly. Of course after I moved everything into storage is when the collecting bug really took hold.

[dkw]

Q: When do bottles go from the wardrobe to the cellar?

A1: When the bottom falls out of it - although that does give you space for a few more rows before you need to move everything.

A2: Since there was no doubt a discussion about the priority of shoes over wine in the wardrobe, and given that you probably held your ground for a while and then lost anyway, and now you and your wine are out in the sleepout which probably gets stinking hot during the day and stays that way most of the night, and after four days you're starting to wish you had more than just the one shirt and pants you're wearing now, and besides, your head still hurts where you collected that stiletto heel, maybe now is the time to shift the wine to the cellar.

Dave.

[DJ]

When you get obsessive, have a cellar and or can afford it.

My cellar reached the 900 bottle mark before we had a place of our own. Until then it was stored under different relatives houses with variable passive cellaring in Sydney and Newcastle. Initially our cellar was insulated passive in Canberra, then we added a Fondis.

Wines kept for 12 - 14 years just in poor passive cellars have been remarkably good. I just hope that all the extra expense I have now for good storage pays off.

Currently 90% of the cellar is at Wineark while I start construction of a cellar in the new place.

[WineAroundOz]

Stage 1: get a decent wine fridge for the house.
Stage 2: get a 2nd decent wine fridge for the house.
Stage 3: when both fridges are overflowing, put all the stuff in storage and start again.

T

[Michael McNally]

Hopefully in December when our renovations are finished (this is optimistic as they aren't even started yet!). It was surprisingly easy to get a dedicated wine storage room. I just put it on the first set of plans we drew up by hand, and talked about it as if it was simply natural that it would be part of the renovations. It got squeezed to be quite small at one point, but the bathroom was just too big.......

Cheers

Michael