Optimum bottles of port to have?

Richard Henderson · Post by **Richard Henderson** » Sat Feb 04, 2006 4:42 pm

I have noticed over the past 4-5 years that I maintain 220-240 bottles of VP. I am not sure how that got to be the number, but with random counting of the bottles, evrey 6 months or so and there is considerable turnover, that number has stayed constant. It is not a conscious thing.
It seems to be a good number.
I estimate 6-7 cases in and 6-7 cases consumed annually.
I have noticed that I have now 23 bottles or 2 cases of vintage madeira from 1834 to 1983. That is about 2-3 bottles per year consumed, not sure I have established an average , yet.
Anyone else have an average number of bottles?

Tom Archer · Post by **Tom Archer** » Sat Feb 04, 2006 11:22 pm

The number of permutations of vintage and shipper that still offer good drinking is somewhere around the 500 mark, and of course one never likes to drink one's last bottle...

So maybe 1500-2500 would be optimum

- it is a shame to let wine go past it's peak, but if you are drinking 80 bottles of VP a year, this would seem a manageable stock level.

I am tempted to amass a centenary collection - sufficient to yield a century (or more) old bottle every year for the next hundred years.

Picking recent bottles that will probably stand such a test of time is quite difficult though..

Tom

Paul Napolitano · Post by **Paul Napolitano** » Mon Feb 06, 2006 9:41 am

uncle tom wrote: So maybe 1500-2500 would be optimum
Tom

A quick check of my cellar inventory program says I have 756 bottles of Port which takes up about a 1/5 of my cellar. My wife is a heavy duty Port fan but if I tell her we need to at least double the amount of Port we own she will most likely start a bottle of 1963 Taylor travelling in the wrong direction in my digestive tract...if you know what I mean. Suggestions?

Tom Archer · Post by **Tom Archer** » Mon Feb 06, 2006 11:20 pm

Suggestions?

1) Hire cleaner

2) Hire lady to do laundry etc.

3) Explain to wife that she is no longer indispensible

4) Duck flying bottle (hopefully cheap ruby)

5) Fill remaining 4/5 cellar

6) Enjoy!

Tom 8)

Post by **Roy Hersh** » Tue Feb 07, 2006 1:29 am

Tell Trish she is cut off!

I thought she prefered Tawny anyway?

In all seriousness, tell her I say hello. If any of you want to see pics of Paul and his Mrs. N, they are in photos in the article archive on this site:

The 2003 Great Seattle Port Tasting.

dlester · Post by **dlester** » Mon Feb 13, 2006 9:41 am

uncle tom wrote:
Suggestions?
1) Hire cleaner

2) Hire lady to do laundry etc.

3) Explain to wife that she is no longer indispensible

4) Duck flying bottle (hopefully cheap ruby)

5) Fill remaining 4/5 cellar

6) Enjoy!

Tom 8)

Tom,

You forgot:

7) Consult Divorce Lawyer

8) Discover wife is entitled to half your assets

9) Contemplate ten years in jail for manslaughter (pleading justifiable homicide after 1945 Taylor was destroyed in front of you) vs giving away half of ones port cellar.

So, how good are your lawyers (divorce and criminal)?

Richard Henderson · Post by **Richard Henderson** » Mon Feb 13, 2006 11:22 am

Did my thread ever slide off topic!!!!

I did discuss the static number of bottles we had with my wife and she found it "interesting".
She once threatened me with injury when I traded some 83 Cockburn so I know she really is interested.

She has a double standard. She complains about my credit card balances yet, when I make a buy of VP on sale , she wants to be sure I bought all there was. If I open a bottle of VP she likes, her first question is "Do we have any more of this?" :twisted:
I am happy to say that her Valentine's present is 6 bottles of 83 Cockburn.

Al B. · Post by **Al B.** » Mon Feb 13, 2006 1:49 pm

I think you guys have just won the award for the most amusing thread so far on this forum.

Thanks for making me laugh a few times. Just not sure if I should show this thread to Elizabeth....it might make her start to think too much....

Alex

Richard Henderson · Post by **Richard Henderson** » Tue Feb 14, 2006 8:35 pm

I opened a bottle of the 83 Cockburn for Valentine's Dinner. It was well received. It followed an 83 Cos d'Estournel from our anniversary year. It was well into its prime but classic smooth claret.
I may post on the 83 Cockburn on a separate thread. Suffice to say that it is a spicy, deep stewed blueberry masterpiece!
I have made full atonement for the previous Cockburn trade.
My present from her was 3 bottles of 97 Margaux. An "off vintage" but well priced.

Post by **Andy Velebil** » Tue Feb 14, 2006 9:27 pm

Well I see I am a bit late on this one, but I say one can never have enough porto in their cellar. :twisted:

OK, I have to go clean the dog house now...I may be spending some time in it soon.

Richard Henderson · Post by **Richard Henderson** » Thu Feb 16, 2006 9:09 pm

Andy,

Have you ever counted every 3-6 months the number of bottles you have, factored in bottles drunk and replaced and then tried to observe if your bottles are steadily increasing or remaining static, or God forbid, decreasing?

Threads on other boards speak of the optimum bottle count based upon life expectancy and bottles consumed per year, etc.
I don't want to get maudlin, but there will be a last bottle drunk in all of our lives.

If a person accumulates 3000 bottles of port on their 90th birthday, it is probably time to see if they can drink them all before they turn 100! SO the challenge then is to drink 300 bottles per year and maybe shed a tear at their 100th birthday party because they are out!!!

Post by **Andy Velebil** » Thu Feb 16, 2006 10:24 pm

No I've never actually counted and all that nonsense. I do know that I am gaining in ports everyyear. I am still quite new to ports in the past few years so I am trying to play catch up in building up a cellar of both young and older ports. Older ones to start drinking soon and the younger ones to lay down for when they are ready to drink.

I am now doing good on the younger ports from the 2000-2003, and am just starting to get a decent selection '90s and '80s stuff, with a handfull of '70s. I am trying to get a wide variety of producers and on my limited budget right now that means only getting 1-3 bottles at a time. Hunting down as many good deals as I can find.

OK, more info than you probably wanted 8)

Post by **Roy Hersh** » Fri Feb 17, 2006 1:36 am

Interesting topic.

I used to have a lot more Port than my good friend Paul. That is no longer the case and his collection has surpassed my meager 60 cases. In fact, I don't think my total will ever exceed where it is at today. Since putting in a temperature controlled cellar into the house (1/01) we bought in 2000, I have only opened a total of 330 bottles from my own supply.

This includes Colheitas and Vintage Ports (approx. 260-270 were VP) with a very small smattering of 10/20 year old Tawnies and LBVs (in comparison). It seems that my collection stays static between 55 and 60 cases (includes a modest stash elsewhere) but since for the past 2+ decades I have consumed a very large percentage of my old VPs (1970 going back in time), I am left with a mid-range cellar with about 70% of my wines ranging from 1977-1994 and the pre and post eras split about evenly at 15% each.

Having spent an hour figuring this all out, I now see there is no reason to buy any more young VPs and that I should aim all future purchases towards restocking my older VPs which once made up more than 40% of my (pre-1970 VP) cellar. Clearly, it is time to start drinking some younger Ports on a more frequent basis; something I have really been religious about NOT doing.

Depressing! The only good news I can think of is that my daughter Taylor will drink very well when she is of age (now only 3), or when I croak.

Al B. · Post by **Al B.** » Fri Feb 17, 2006 7:37 am

Now Roy has touched there on one of the reasons why I will continue to buy new vintages of port as and when they are released. I currently have around 25 cases of VP, of which about 50% are post '94 (ie. not ready for drinking except in one of my "experimental" moods), 25% are from vintages after 1985 up to (and including) 1994 - which I consider to be worth drinking occasionally and the rest are mainly from the years 1963 to 1985 and are what I would often drink if I had more of them.

I will continue to buy older wines for current drinking and recent wines for maturing in roughly the above ratios - in January, for example, I bought 6 bottles from the 2000 vintage and 3 from the 1966. Its my hope and intention that by the time I shuffle off this mortal coil that I will have been able to pass on to my children my love of good wine and leave them with a part of their inheritance in the form of some mature bottles of well aged port.

My only port "inheritance" was a case of Taylors '63 that I was given by my grandparents on my 21st birthday - with strict instructions not to drink more than one bottle a year for the next 12 years. That first taste made a huge impact on me but it wasn't for about another 8 years that I really developed a liking for VP. I still have some of the bottles I was given and they are very special to me.

So far, my children's training is not going too well. Whenever they have tried my wine their reaction has always been one of "Eugh! How can you drink that stuff!" but I don't give up hope. I still have another 10 years before my daughters 21st birthday, so I still have time to achieve success.

But whether they choose to drink and enjoy wine or not, part of their inheritance will be a balanced cellar of young and mature wines for them to enjoy over a period of many years after I am gone and - hopefully - for them to continue to maintain a balanced cellar for their children and the future.

And that's why I don't have to stop buying wine!! Because when my other half says that I'm buying more than we need or can realistically drink, I just say that its not just for us - its also for the children and their children!!

Alex

nicos neocleous · Post by **nicos neocleous** » Fri Feb 17, 2006 12:01 pm

uncle tom wrote:The number of permutations of vintage and shipper that still offer good drinking is somewhere around the 500 mark, and of course one never likes to drink one's last bottle...

So maybe 1500-2500 would be optimum

Tom

That's a LOT of Port!

lightning · Post by **lightning** » Fri Feb 24, 2006 3:58 am

nicos neocleous wrote:
uncle tom wrote:The number of permutations of vintage and shipper that still offer good drinking is somewhere around the 500 mark, and of course one never likes to drink one's last bottle...

So maybe 1500-2500 would be optimum

Tom
That's a LOT of Port!

My word...I've got a LOT of catching up to do compared to some of you! 700 bottles, 1500-2500 bottles...wow. That's a LOT of money tied up in there.

From someone who's quite new to port, I would estimate that 100-150 bottles would be optimum - I don't drink wine every night, and when I do drink wine, I don't drink port exclusively. Anyway, I hope to have my port collection up to about 10-20 bottles by the end of the year - port prices are ridiculous in Australia (probably close to double what most of you are paying), and there's very little of it around.

Nikolaj Winther · Post by **Nikolaj Winther** » Fri Feb 24, 2006 5:38 am

lightning wrote:My word...I've got a LOT of catching up to do compared to some of you! 700 bottles, 1500-2500 bottles...wow. That's a LOT of money tied up in there.

From someone who's quite new to port, I would estimate that 100-150 bottles would be optimum - I don't drink wine every night, and when I do drink wine, I don't drink port exclusively. Anyway, I hope to have my port collection up to about 10-20 bottles by the end of the year - port prices are ridiculous in Australia (probably close to double what most of you are paying), and there's very little of it around.

But I find australian port to be both cheap and of very high quality - at least the colheita-styled ones (especially Sepplt).

Richard Henderson · Post by **Richard Henderson** » Fri Feb 24, 2006 2:25 pm

I agree with many of you above. 750-1500 bottles seems like a lot, even if it is " for the good of the children"!

When we first began to collect wine, we exceeded the capacity of our first cellar , 600+ bottles quickly. After building two 2000 bottle capacity walk-in storage units in subsequent houses, our total number of bottles has never exceeded 1600 or so bottles, meaning we have found our optimum number.

We seem to have found the optimum level of total bottles including about 20 cases of vintage port.

Post by **Roy Hersh** » Fri Feb 24, 2006 7:06 pm

Richard,

That is a very solid plan. If more people would plan their cellar sizes based on their 5-year average consumption, then they would not find over the hill bottles in their cellar. I built mine with a 2000 bottle maximum and can find ANY bottle in my cellar within 30 seconds and that is without any cellar software used. I could fill a cellar of 5000 bottles and it would be far more impressive than mine with 2k bottles, but like you ... I know what the rotation factor is and how much I drink. It makes too much sense and dollars, not to overbuy or more importantly, not to overbuild in the first place.

Richard Henderson · Post by **Richard Henderson** » Fri Feb 24, 2006 7:54 pm

Roy,

We DO have much in common. I look forward to meeting you in person some day. I am surprised that our collections are about the same size.

I can't say I can find any bottle in 30 seconds , but I can find almost any bottle in that time frame. All the port, sauternes, bourdeaux, madeira, California, Champagne etc are in specific places. Occasionally a bottle gets misplaced and it takes a few minutes to find it but I can find it.
I don't have software either. I can say that this most recent cellar is one bottle deep, a first, and no bottle gets "lost" back there.

I think when most people hit 2000+, the bottles start getting lost , over the hill etc. Not for everyone mind you...but when anyone hits 3000-5000, and many folks I know have that quantity, I think it gets out of hand.
I think I could live with 300 bottles of port and I recently added some of that Noval 2003 you recommended and some 1992 Taylor, but 6-8 cases per year in and 6-8 cases out of VP seems to be a good rythym.