wine cellar update

Temperature has held steady between 60 and 62 for April. Our outdoor temperatures have fluctuated from freezing to 80. Median high is likely around 60, or maybe 65.

Building a third rack today. It was a 10$ DIY rack purchased off of the Jefferson Park neighbors page. Holds 30 bottles. Three racks, all of different make, holding the cellar together.

a wine cellar update

primitive, but effective

The wine cellar has sat all winter at a temperature of 55-60 degrees. The fluctuation has not been wild, and most of the time it has been at 56. It's been a cold winter, of course. But as of mid-March, we are still holding steady at 58 degrees.

I have several age worthy pinots and two promising cabernet franc's in the cellar. I'm still setting on a 2004 Pomerol which, someday soon I should probably open. It has not been kept at an ideal temperature for most of its shelf life, so I'm sure it has not aged ... properly. Otherwise, the wine rack I built (at left) has not fallen apart, the rack gets no direct light, and is otherwise stable and undisturbed.

Some facts I had not been aware of when I took inventory the other day.

1) I have a tremendous surplus of whites, particularly Chardonnays. Everything from Mersault to Russian River Valley (or further east--Sonoma Coast).

2) I'm sitting on nearly a case of fine Pinot Noirs, most from Gary Farrell.

3) I have a large number of age-worthy cabernets that I bought at table wine prices. Peters', an Alexander Valley winery, chief among them.

4) After my next shipment, I will be close to running out of space. Time to build another wine rack, and try to push a 100 bottle reserve. At present, I really only have about 30 age worthy wines in the cellar.

Our first freeze

Our first freeze this year came early--November 12. It wrecked my squash and the last of the tomato plants (why I hadn't pulled them, I cannot really say). It also destroyed most of my flowering plants, including of all things the golden pineapple sage, which was just beginning to send up beautiful red flowers.

The arugula survived, as did the radishes. And actually my little seedlings of cold-weather plants appear to still be alive, if not thriving.

The temperature below the stairs is now 58 degrees. It climbed briefly back up to 60 after the freeze, but is otherwise holding steady.

UPDATE: within a week, the temperature below the stairs was back up to 64 degrees. Again, holding steady.

Cellar Up

If the Department of Agriculture can gather stats correctly, it appears that middle income parents spend anywhere from $240,000-$400,000 on one child. And that's only through high school, so it doesn't include college, an all-expense paid summer trip to Europe, law or medical school tuition, a down payment for a house, etc.

So, by rough calculations, one child equals roughly one good wine cellar. I can now smile at my first grader across the breakfast table, and while she dedicates an abnormal amount of concentration on correctly spreading honey over every bit of surface area of her bagel, think "you are why I can't afford cases of 1998 Bordeaux or 2005 Burgundy, or California cult cabs."

Of course, many people can afford both. I'm not one of them, so I've been forced to live bottle to bottle my whole life. My sole holdings amount to a 1994 Pomerol, a 2001 Port whose name I can't remember, and a bottle of red table wine from Cadeuceus Cellars in Arizona. The last one is a horrible wine, or at least it was a horrible wine when I tried it a couple of years ago. I felt obliged to buy at least one bottle since I'd made the trip to their tasting room in Jerome. The pilgrimage is worth it, as Jerome is a fantastic landmark mining town, and the food there and in neighboring Sedona is world class (or at least at the top of its class regionally). Proprietor Maynard Keenan is threatening to make wine cool, and everything from his website to his bottle designs to his styles denote an impish originality. Too bad the wines are awful. I did not take tasting notes at the time, but I just remember floating gobs of jam. The wine had no center, no essence. But that is not to say that time will produce something extraordinary out of Arizona, and if it does, I can at least claim I was there at the creation, and brought a bottle home to stick in the cellar.

My cellar is really a cellar. I have begun temperature tracking it and, given that I am not storing anything serious in it, am not all that concerned about temperature control. I can never imagine having more than 300 bottles in any case, and about the time I clear 100, I will build a drywall container to try to maintain temperature control. As it is, the summer temperatures have never been above 75. While that is 20 degrees too hot for a real cellar, it's only for a few months a year. And better wines have been kept at worse temperatures.

So cellar on. I'll try to build up a running stock, designate some for long keeping, come what may. I am not a collector--I have no desire to stockpile cult bottles of overblown, overpriced wine never meant to be drunk. I want to age some ageworthy wines while keeping good bottles in the cellar for immediate drinking. Table wines will be held upstairs.