Wine subscription service

Depending on where you're storing your wine and the level of quality of the wine you're accruing (and I note you are also looking for a new wine fridge in another thread), having a backlog of wine is possibly going to make your undrunk wines into something more like an investment. I have many friends who don't have any interest in saving wine until it is at its best, buying it and drinking it within days or sometimes hours of purchase. One question your post raises; did the wine shipments you've now cancelled consist of wines you didn't necessarily care for and so they sat around getting dusty, or was it more that you just couldn't keep up due to your low level of volume drinking habits?

As an ex-winery worker, I collected over four hundred bottles in the many years I was in the business, and now 2.5 years since getting out of that biz, I still have around 140 bottles. Part of that is not wanting to waste the good stuff on any Tom Dick or naked harlot who drops their bare ass on one of our deck chairs (towel under those rumps, of course), part of it is that once those bottles are gone I won't be able to afford the level of quality to which I have become accustomed. Unfortunately, my storage concerns are great, while also realizing that many of those coveted bottles are now passing their prime. We live in a little home with a barn beside it, and keeping that barn at better storage temps for vino is both costly and not very realistic given the insulation installed in there. And some wines just are not made to be held back. Overaging a bottle is both frustrating and a waste of space. I have two small wine fridges but neither of them are of very high quality, besides their foolishly small capacity. They are jammed with the best of my collection, but I don't trust them for a few reasons, not the least of which is with the slightest power glitch they lose their temp settings, a problematic situation while on an extended nakation.

I buy decent-tasting though low priced bottles of wine to augment my lingering collection, pull out a good bottle from time to time or when the quality of the meal requires something special (aka the ribeyes are dry ageing in the fridge). Satisfaction or simply a good buzz can come from a $5 Aldi bottle, I will readily admit, but most of that level of quality cannot handle too many months (and generally not years ) in storage. Know what you're buying and buy more than a couple if you like it enough, noting that even the cheapest bottle can show some level of improvement IF you can follow the five rules of wine storage, offered here in order of importance (more or less):

1) Temp - 55 degrees fahrenheit is optimal for all wine storage, with no more than a 1 or 2 degrees change on a daily basis or the ageing is sped up dramatically. Never store above 68 or below 45 for very long or you're 'cooking' or 'freezing' the ageing process. White, red, pink or sweet, wine languishing at 55 will pay back the patient person.

2) Angle of storage - sideways is optimal, but on its nose is better than on its heel. This is to keep the cork moist/always wet against the wine. A dry cork may let the outside air sneak by it, and outside air is full of the things that will destroy the product, vinegar bacteria being the worst (but not the only) culprit. Screw caps almost never go faulty or leak, but the current thought in the industry suggests to still store them on their side.

3) Light - always in the dark, please! Light is like heat to wine, and any constant light source does nothing good. If you must go in and stare at your bottles, do so, salivate if you must, but turn the light off when you're done, then go unscrew that cheap Highway 5 bottle of cab you paid under a Lincoln for, toast yourself for keeping your patience intact, and consider who in your life is worthy of sharing that '07 Penfolds Grange you've been sitting on for a generation.

4) Vibration - and why a quality wine fridge has no compressor built into it, or the wine storage area is fully-isolated from it. Any constant or even regular intermittent movement of the wine stops any development of flavor, essentially turning the wine into a static product.

5) Sort of attached to rule 4 - there is no reason to turn the bottles you're holding. Somewhere along the way, someone either got confused about the way wine is created and/or its proper storage. I've heard it said that to keep wine from forming sedimentation on the inside of the bottle is to turn it a few degrees every few months. 'Riddling' a bottle of champagne is part of its creation, keeping the process of its second fermentation going by mixing the yeast with the sugar that's been added to build the bubbles, stirring the pot so-to-speak. Letting a wine form a completely natural sediment during ageing - which many of the world's finest wines will do (and some of the shittiest will as well) - may keep the particles that precipitate out of ageing wine, which otherwise would be loose in the liquid, from getting into your wine glass when you finally decide to open that special bottle for some special celebration. That sediment won't hurt you by the way, but ug, it's no fun in the mouth, so pour slowly when you're getting near the bottom, and carefully, or use a non-reactive strainer. Avoid coffee filters, but they work in a pinch.

I wish I could offer some real information about good wine refrigerators but I don't know much of anything about the subject. Do the research and buy smart - don't buy a $10,000 wine cave that holds 500 bottles if all you plan to put in it is a gross of Tickle Pink or a case of Mad Dog - not to knock specific brands, but those don't age very much anyway. A final word or three dozen in that vein - to remind the wine drinker of the most important thing when the subject of wine quality is being contemplated or discussed: No one tastes wine quite like you do. Individual taste supersedes any other factor, and if you let anyone tell you what you like, you are doing yourself a disservice. You are not wrong. If you enjoy it and everyone else at the party thinks it is pure plonk, they are at least buffoons and and likely snobs. Price means pretty much nothing and labels mean even less. Last bottle at the party and everyone but you hates it? To me, that sounds like a good party for you!

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