The Accidental Wine Collection, Part Deux: Stat-Geek Edition

After going through the organizational exercise I described in my previous post, I was reminded that one of the interesting (dare I say fun?) things about having a collection of any kind is being able to analyze what you have and draw conclusions. Sorta reminds me of when I collected baseball cards as a kid -- I'd organize them and analyze them to figure out what gems I had (like my 1971 Johnny Bench or my 1978 Eddie Murray rookie card) and how close I was to my annual goal of collecting every member of the Reds and the Yankees (my two favorite teams at the time). I could spend hours messing around with that. I did.
 

Having a wine collection is similar, except there's drinking involved (a definite advantage!). One of the nice things about cellartracker.com is that you can slice and dice your collection to see what you really have. While I can't say I was completely surprised by anything I learned, it definitely gave me a more empirical picture of our habits. Here's a few observations:

• We've bought a vast majority of our wine from wineries, either on our travels around Virginia, from events like Virginia Wine Expo, or our visits to Central California and France. Sure, there are some price tags from wine shops, and even a few grocery stores, but by-and-large we buy from the source.
• Red wine makes up a vast majority of the collection, with 82% of the collection being some form of red (including some fortified reds). White came in at 12.4%, "other" (which means fruit wines and ciders) at 3.4% and rose at 2.3%. That said, we just wrapped up prime white wine drinking season, so that part of the collection may be slightly depleted.
• Virginia winegrowers love to see us coming! 60.5% of our collection (107 bottles) is from Virginia. California is the next largest domestic point of origin, with 16.9% (30 bottles), many of which are from the Santa Barbara/Santa Ynez Valley area (where "Sideways" was filmed, in case you're wondering), which makes sense since we've been there recently. After that, our domestic wines are a few onsies and twosies.
• France is our biggest foreign source of wine (this will come as no surprise to anyone who knows us) with 15.3% or 27 bottles. A vast majority of those are from the Rhone (17 bottles), since we've been to that area twice and absolutely love Rhone-style wines in general. We've also got a little bit of Bordeaux and Burgundy, but not much. Maybe we need to visit one of those places next.
• After France, it's pretty light. We've got a few Italian wines, plus some random ones from other areas like South America, the Iberian Peninsula and Australia.
• We have a lot of blends. The biggest group (24 bottles) is red Bordeaux-style blends, which makes sense because, in addition to some actual bottles of Bordeaux, that's a very popular style among Virginia winemakers. Next is general red blends, with 16 bottles, followed by Rhone blends with 15 bottles. So clearly we like blends.
• But we also have plenty of individual varieties, especially ones that do well in Virginia, with Cabernet Franc (very good in VA), Merlot, Pinot Noir (which I absolutely love, and which is fabulous in the Santa Ynez Valley), Petit Verdot (also something that does well in VA -- VA loves the lesser Bordeaux grapes), Cabernet Sauvignon and Syrah. We have between 10-15 bottles of each.
• And then there's Chardonnay, our first white grape, with six bottles. Then comes a random assortment of varieties and styles where we have 1-3 bottles of each, including Rose, Viognier (very good in VA -- we must've consumed most of our stock), Pinotage, Blaufrankisch, Dornfelder (Otium Cellars in Purcellville, VA does some German grapes), and a whole bunch of one-offs.
• Not surprisingly, wine clubs are a major source. We have large amounts from the wineries where we are club members, including Fabbioli, Mountfair, Doukenie and Sunset Hills here in VA. One exception is Foxen Winery, which is probably our favorite in the Santa Ynez Valley. We bought a bunch out there, and then recently Bazin's on Church in Vienna, VA hosted a Foxen wine dinner.

So what does this say about us and our wine habits? On the one hand, it's clear we support our local winegrowers, which feels right to me -- we've gotten a lot of enjoyment out of the burgeoning Virginia wine scene, and I'm proud to support them. That said, our focus is pretty narrow -- we specialize in certain areas and don't have a lot from around the world. We are definitely Francophiles, and have spent a lot of our married life drinking and studying the wine from there.

But we love Italian wine too! Unfortunately, we don't know as much about it -- it's not as easy for us to grasp as French wine, but that's a topic for another blog. I also know that a lot of Italian wine comes through the house, but doesn't accumulate -- it goes straight into our bellies. And while we've bought Spanish, Australian and South American wines, we've just never concentrated on them from an acquisition or study standpoint.

In short, we've got a good collection of wines we like, including a lot of local wines and wines from our favorite wine regions, but we still have a lot of exploring to do. This is a snapshot in time, but it'll be interesting to see how things evolve. Now that we've entered an era of actual wine record keeping for us, we'll be able to do just that.