The Poor Wine Collector

One week ago, I traded in my shared bedroom in an apartment less than a mile from the beach for an empty house in Suburbia, USA.  Suburbia, USA is still just 10 miles or so from the beach, but the difference between my new home and my old ones couldn’t be more drastic.  Most notably, the average temperature during July at my old house would be less than 80 degrees on a hot day.  New home: over 100.  Sadly, my new home doesn’t have an air conditioner so I’ve been sweating my way through the late afternoons, praying that the sun will set faster so the cooling night will come to my rescue.  I’ve managed to survive thus far but today I realized that my wine collection might not be so lucky.

I was trying to select a bottle to open with dinner tonight when I realized that several bottles in my collection showed the unmistakable signs of heat fatigue.  Extreme heat can cause corks to dry up and wine to seep through them, leaving the top of the bottles a bit sticky.  Luckily, I only have 8 bottles from the collection here with me.  Unluckily, they are 8 of the best I own.  These bottles will now likely have to be opened in the very near future so I’ll get to actually enjoy them before they prematurely age and turn to vinegar. 

This unfortunate event made me realize one thing: it sucks to be a poor wine collector.  I have no temperature controlled cellar to house my wine, even though I’ve got several bottles that deserve that degree of attention.  All I can manage is the bottom of a closet and all the cooling that the shade can provide.    So, instead of the temperature and humidity controlled environment that cellars provide, all I can offer wine for a home is a rugged environment that is unstable, frequently hot, dry, and overall unfriendly.  The environment I can offer is one that would be nice if I were growing wine but one that is horrible for aging it. 

So, what’s a poor person to do?  And, by poor, I mean the 99% of us that cannot afford a temperature controlled wine cellar.  Well, there are mini fridges built especially for wine that control the temperature and humidity for 8-20 bottles of your favorite wine.  Bad news here is the limited space that they offer and the cost of the power it takes to operate them.  Still, I may have to invest in one of these little units to protect the prizes of my collection.  Ideally, a poor wine collector would live in an air conditioned house in a moderate climate that will provide a stable condition for wine storage.  I used to live in such an environment and have crashed back to reality since moving away from it.  It just isn’t fun to see your prizes, prizes that you might have been saving for special occasions in the future, take a turn for the worse just because of the climate.  Such is the nature of wine.  Old wine can be an incredible asset (both in terms of taste and monetary value), but it is a fickle one.  Wine is only as valuable as the life it’s lived.  Most of us cannot provide wine the life of luxury that it requires to age gracefully so we are ill suited to be collectors.  Those poor wine collectors among us must evolve into consumers.  99% of wine is meant to be consumed within a year of bottling.  What I now realize is that the 99% of us are too poor to have a wine cellar of our own, so we should buy the 99% of the wine not meant to be aged 99% of the time.  Did I lose you?  If so, ready that over again. 

Faced with my current situation, I’ve decided to buy a little refrigerator that will house 10 bottles of my age-worthy wine, I will fill said refrigerator with my 10 bottles and will only buy bottles meant for immediate consumption from thenceforth.  If I stick to my 99-99-99 theory, my little 10 bottle cellar will be able to last me 1,000 bottles, or more than 5 years (that’s a conservative estimate).  While I don’t like my situation, I’m glad that I now accept it and have a plan that I can move forward with.  I think that most of us hold onto wine longer than we should so I would encourage all of my readers that store wine to really think about what they are saving and why.  Without a doubt, we all buy wine to drink and enjoy, not to see it turn into undrinkable vinegar, so we might as well err on the side of caution when it comes to aging wine and drink it when it is too young rather than risk it turning into an undrinkable bottle of expensive vinegar.

I hope that no one else has the same experience that I have just had.  Remember, it is easy to want to hold onto wine and amass an impressive collection, but that collection is worthless unless you can enjoy it.  Wine is meant to be enjoyed.  Luckily, 99% of us are poor enough to be buying wine that we can immediately enjoy.