The Accidental Wine Collection

Yep -- 178 bottles. How'd that happen?

I don't think either one of us ever set out to be wine collectors. Sure, we like wine, and we've purchased and consumed our share. But there was never one epiphany where one of us woke up, turned to the other and said, "Honey, I think we should start a wine collection."

Wine collections are for rich people. They seem decadent, and maybe you should be spending your money on something else. Once upon a time we bought plenty of wine, but most of it was from Trader Joe's or Planet Wine's $15 and under rack. And we didn't collect it. We drank it. In many cases, it went straight from the shop to our bellies without spending much time in a rack. I used to use our lone 16 bottle wine rack to store other things, like large format beer bottles and cider, and there was usually plenty of room.

But somewhere around the mid- to late-2000's something started to change.
It was slow at first. We'd pick up Planet Wine's monthly "Planet Pack," which consisted of six bottles, usually around a theme, and was a great way to learn about different types of wine. Then, as described in an earlier post, we started visiting more wineries out in Northern Virginia (as well as on travels to California and Europe) and we started accumulating wine. It didn't hurt that we'd both clawed our way up squarely into middle management at work and could now afford more than the bargain bin wines every now and again (though we still love a bargain...).

We'd spend an afternoon driving around Loudoun County, in the hills around Charlottesville, or out I-66 toward the Shenandoah and we'd stop at 3-4 wineries and taste. We'd pick up a bottle or two at each stop, sometimes getting up in the 3-5 range at the later stops as judgment melted away. And suddenly, someone would pitch you on joining the wine club and you'd think, "Well, this stuff is pretty good. And we're really only talking three bottles a quarter. And I'm sure we'll drink it..."

Fast forward to a few years later and you find Patti and me in our basement, with our wine racks full, and building a new one because neither one of us can keep track of what we have anymore and the wine is piled willy-nilly everywhere. We also opened an account on cellartracker.com so we could tap their extensive database and enter our wines so we can track them. And after a Saturday afternoon of data entry, wine rack building and wine organizing, suddenly you realize you have 178 bottles of wine. It's a collection.

Part of me is proud, another part slightly embarrassed, but it is what it is. We've got a wine for just about any occasion, and it keeps on growing. Plus, if we get trapped in a blizzard, we'll never run out of things to drink (this came in particularly handy during 2010's "Snomageddon" series of storms).

A few words about the technology. I was all set to use Vivino, an iPhone app which has a cellar management function, along with a nifty feature where you can actually scan a wine label with your phone, and it will identify the wine. But then I came across a blog post saying that basically most wine apps are crap, and most wine drinkers don't use apps anyway, but they did have some recommendations. I wrote to the author (who, in addition to being a wine aficionado, works in Silicon Valley developing iPhone apps -- so I figure he might know a thing or two) and asked for his recommendation. He wasn't keen on Vivino, but he recommended cellartracker.com because, while it doesn't have an app per se (more on that in a sec) it does have an extensive database of wine.

I have to say I'm pretty impressed. The database recognized most of our wine, even though a majority of it is from Virginia and therefore not exactly ubiquitous. I had to enter a few wines from scratch and add some vintages, but probably no more than a dozen all told. Plus, while cellartracker.com doesn't have an app per se (they're testing a mobile site) there are some apps that tie into the database and make it easy to look at and sort your wines on your iPhone, iPad or other smartphone/tablet.

All in all, we felt like we accomplished something last Saturday. Now we have well-organized, database driven proof that we're wine geeks! I'll explore just how the collection shaped up in a future post.