WSJ on protecting yer swill

[AKR]

https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-to-pro ... ajor_pos24

[AlexR]

Hi Arv,

The article can only be read by subscribers for more than the first couple of paragraphs.

Only a tiny percentage of people buy fine wines to age for décades, and only a small proportion of those can afford to store them in prime condition or insure them.
I certainly can't...

I have a passive cellar, but I don't think the wine suffers too much.

I'm not jealous of the people who have trophy cellars. Honestly. In fact, I wish I could do the same.
What I will say though is that I find it sad when people drink only the name wines and the politically correct wines. That's their business and there is obviously nothing "wrong" with that, but I think perspective helps us to appreciate the great wines even more.

All the best,
Alex

[jckba]

Alex - if you input the title into google you can get around the pay wall restrictions

[marcs]

"Plan for the future. Mr. Tilden suggests buying a free-standing unit or building a cellar with 25% to 50% more capacity than you currently need. “Customers often don’t anticipate future needs,” he says. “Make sure you are able to expand your collection. It will undoubtedly grow.”

ESPECIALLY IF YOU READ BORDEAUX WINE ENABLERS!

[DavidG]

A cellar with 1000-1500 bottle capacity is $25,000 to $50,000? I built mine, admittedly 25 years ago, for $5,500. Capacity 2000. With 2 chillers. But it wasn’t fancy. Not for dining or drinking inside, which I don’t understand anyway because who wants to eat and drink with a coat on in a 55 degree room?

I never worried much about cooling failure since I had a backup chiller and so much wine in there that even when the power was out for 5 days in the dead of summer it only got up to 70 degrees at the end of it.

[stefan]

>>
A cellar with 1000-1500 bottle capacity is $25,000 to $50,000?
>>

I would have been surprised before I converted a closet into a wine closet that holds 400 bottles. The cost was around $11,000 IIRC. Racking was a bit more than $1K, AC maybe $1.2K, door $.6K. There were two carpenters, an electrician, a plumber, and a carpet specialist who were called for small but needed things. The time two carpenters were on the job far, far exceeded my upper estimate. The same carpenters built us a lighted and very solid 12' by 12' gazebo with a ceiling fan and added items to our deck for less than $8K.

[jckba]

David - I think that costs have gone through the roof on these types of specialized jobs as today, 2 through the wall cooling units can get you up in or above that $5500 number pretty easily depending on the unit capacity and brand. And I too used the basement of my house as the location of my wine cellar as if I were to lose power for a couple of days, my basement temperatures never get above 70 even towards the end of summer, so I think I would probably be just fine.

Stefan - The family friend contractor that I hired to build and assemble my racking ran a smidgeon over 3 times his estimate and technically there were still some loose ends once done ... but being that it came out the way I had envisioned and the fact that he was willing to extend to me a payment plan, made this the best choice for me. The unforeseen time suck in my case stemmed from the fact that my basement floor was uneven, so the building of the Bdx case racking took twice as long as he had expected in order to make it level.

[sdr]

Châteaux in Bordeaux, as well as merchants located in Bordeaux, are often assumed to have perfect storage conditions, hence the sky high prices for older bottles “ex-Château.”

Based on my one visit there that seemed to be true, at least for the super high end places.

But I am not sure that is universally true, especially for the Right Bank properties.

Is storage in Bordeaux, especially if passive, guaranteed perfect?

Stu

[AlexR]

Stu,

No, conditions vary considerably, I assure you...

If you do your homework you can make sure the wine is, in fact, stored at a good temperature, but the average consumer cannot.

This large bonded warehouse used by many négociants does have very good conditions: http://www.bordeauxcitybond.com/

All the best,
Alex

[AlohaArtakaHoundsong]

I guess aesthetics and accessibility have a lot to do with the price.

[sdr]

Thanks Alex, I thought you would know.

BordeauxCityBond looks incredibly sophisticated.

Stu

[JimHow]

Except, Alex, can you tell them that there are at least two grammatical errors in the first two sentences of the "Our Team" section of their website.
I determined that after viewing their site for 20 seconds, then terminated my viewing.
I'll check in for another 45 seconds or so and assess how many more errors are in their site.
And they are holding themselves out as protectors of millions of dollars of wine? Hmmmm.

[dstgolf]

Jim,

Translation errors and I hope not done by Alex's company who is rumoured to officially retire next Friday!! Wish him the best.

[Tom In DC]

Perhaps team is plural in UK english?

[marcs]

Stu,

No, conditions vary considerably, I assure you...

If you do your homework you can make sure the wine is, in fact, stored at a good temperature, but the average consumer cannot.

This large bonded warehouse used by many négociants does have very good conditions: http://www.bordeauxcitybond.com/

All the best,
Alex

I paid extra to get half a case of 1996 Sociando Mallet "ex-negociant" and the stuff is shot...last time i make that mistake.