One of my favorite concepts of Marie Kondo’s The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, is the idea that if it does not bring you joy, remove it. Often times collectors start with a passion for big, bold, domestic wines, and then progress towards lighter, more European styles, or go from daily drinkers, to investment wines. Others have a mish mash of wines brought back from wine country trips, and the wines are buried in the collection, or, the more common affliction, is the wine club windfall (don’t worry, I’m guilty of it too).
Where do you start? Pull out all of the wines you suspect are over the hill. This includes rose, sparkling wines, domestic light bodied whites and reds, and lighter styles of European wines. The two unexpected exceptions? Zinfandel and Riesling. These keep getting better and more interesting with decades of age.
Next, pull out all high value wines and set them in their own section. This includes Grand Crus, First Growths, and wines known as California Grand Crus (the Bond’s, Screaming Eagle, Opus, Dominus, Peter Michael, etc.) Make sure these are stored properly and are organized, and won’t be accidentally consumed by a thirst unsuspecting house guest.
The rest is the tedious and extensive organization and cataloging of the entirety of the collection. Pull the wines that no longer fit your taste, and throw a party, or broker them so that you can fill your cellar with wines you will drink, or will make great investments.
Of course, Enotrias can do all of this for you, from organization, to cataloging in multiple cloud based systems and excel spreadsheets, to brokering wines from, and procuring wines for your collection.