Cellar Organization

[Roy Hersh]

How do you maintain your Ports in the cellar? Any specific strategy or lay out?

[Eric Ifune]

Any open spot!

[Eric Menchen]

Oldest on the bottom, newest on top, alphabetical within vintages. Extras of various years that I don't have current rack space for are stored in OWCs and shipping boxes that allow the bottles to lie horizontally. For example, I have 9 1994 Taylor. I think six are in a box with six other 1994s that are also "duplicates". Geeky I know.

[Glenn E.]

I use my Eurocave for long-term storage because it should be the higher quality of the two big refrigerators. So that's where most of my VP resides.

Inside the Eurocave, I have the youngest VPs near the bottom where it's probably cooler. They tend to be grouped by case or half case, though there are a couple of notable exceptions near the top of the fridge. In one case, two shelves are occupied by 2 x Roy's Top 12. In the other case, two shelves are occupied by my 1985 horizontal. The top two shelves in the fridge are my version of death row - odds and ends that don't fit on another shelf or are mature and ready to drink. My magnums are at the very bottom of the fridge because that's where they fit.

The other refrigerator is primarily tawnies and Colheitas, though there are a few odds & ends of VP in there also as well as a case of red wine for my wife. My 1964 Colheitas reside near the bottom of that fridge.

I have a case of assorted 40-yr olds that are just stored in a box on the floor in the office because they don't fit in either fridge. I have half a case of 1997 Quinta do Tedo stacked against the wall in the office for the same reason.

My cellar defenders stand ready on top of my half fridge out in the living room. Right now the defenders consist of 4 x 2003 Taylor LBV, 2 x Portal 20-yr old, and 2 x Ferreira 20-yr old. There's also a 1991 Dona Matilde Colheita out there. That half fridge holds my Douro wines and a few Spanish reds as well.

[Moses Botbol]

Just stack the OWC on top of another OWC. Fill in loose cardboard cases with an empty spot and make note of which box it is on a spreadsheet. Typically, since I am stacking cases, the newest stuff goes on the bottom.

[Tom Archer]

Every bottle is dutifully recorded - level, bottler, condition etc. I also record the last date of inspection.

The bottles from each case are then ordered according to their condition.

Every case is given a serial number, and every bottle within that case is given a letter that serves as a suffix to the serial number, so every bottle is uniquely identified. The best bottle in the case is suffixed A, then B and so on.

Every bottle is then tagged to indicate its number. The tags I use are cardboard luggage tags, just under 2" wide, which I guillotine down to a height of just over 1".

The bottles are then racked in the cellar, and ordered vertically. The position of the topmost bottle is then recorded on my computer. For conveniance, I tend to put younger bottles on the lower tiers and older ones further up. I also put older bottles in single depth racks, so I can keep a better eye on them, and younger ones in double depth racks - which are very space efficient. Besides that however, the computer record means that any stash of bottles can go anywhere there is space.

Every rack has a number, every column in the rack has a letter, and every row a number, so 12G15 means rack 12, 7th column(G) 15th row down.

When I open a bottle, I cut off the neck tag, which is not thrown away until the fate of the bottle has been recorded on the computer. I have in front of me tag 436B which belonged to a bottle of Burmester '85 that I decanted earlier (quite promising at first sip, despite a saturated crumbly cork..) - it will stay on my desk until I have recorded a TN on the computer.

I am also now categorising my stocks as follows:

Bottles under 18 years - Kindergarten (K)
Over 18 but not yet admitted to my current drinking cellar - Ladies in waiting (L)
Over 25 and still not admitted - Old maids (O)
Current drinking (2,000 bottles at the start of each year) (C)
Non-vintage (N)
Drunk to extinction (D)
Sold (S)

Six bottles from the current drinking cellar also reside on Death row (XX)

Tom

[Rob C.]

Drunk to extinction (D)

Please explain...if it remains in your stocks, how can this be so? Or does it refer to old irreplaceable bottles?

[Jeff G.]

Drunk to extinction (D)

Please explain...if it remains in your stocks, how can this be so? Or does it refer to old irreplaceable bottles?

good point maybe he means drunk to the point of extinction.


My cellar is no where near as deep as alot of you guys

I keep it simple.

On a 15 row shelf.

First three rows are given to A-C houses
Next three are given to D-F (not including fonseca, which has it's own shelf organized by year younger on the bottom and ready to drink on top)
Next three are given G-L
Next three are given to M-T
and the last three given to everything else.

[Jim R.]

I keep a log of the cellar location for each wine. I keep tasting notes for each on 5 by 7 cards. I place bottles in any open cardboard box slot. Tom's organizational skills are impressive!

[Gary Richardson]

Any open spot, but I have it cataloged in a spreadsheet so I can find any bottle whenever I need.

-- Gary

[Peter W. Meek]

I organize my wines (including port) on Cellartracker.com and record the location in my cellar with each wine. My cellar has racks from A to W (with I and O missing). Each rack has from 4 to 9 columns, 12 spaces to a column. I usually locate by rack/column/h|l (high and low. If I can't find a bottle from a choice of 6 spaces, I probably shouldn't be drinking. If I ever really got into single bottle collecting, it would be easy enough to convert to three-digit numbers after the rack letter (column, followed by the space number from 01 to 12). Under the columns are three shelves for wine in cases - named s0, s1 and s2 after the Rack letter..

BTW, if anyone is ever curious about what is in my cellar, my inventory on CT is public. Just search for user 'pwm'.

[Andy Velebil]

Well, uh, kinda wherever I can find a spot in my home cellar or offsite . Makes for some digging to find things periodically, but I always manage to find some things I forgot I had in the process.

[Tom Archer]

Please explain...if it remains in your stocks, how can this be so? Or does it refer to old irreplaceable bottles?

(D) and (S) refer to cases where the stock has been reduced to zero, but TNs and/or sale records are still on the computer for reference.

Tom

[Rob C.]

Inside the Eurocave, I have the youngest VPs near the bottom where it's probably cooler. They tend to be grouped by case or half case, though there are a couple of notable exceptions near the top of the fridge. In one case, two shelves are occupied by 2 x Roy's Top 12. In the other case, two shelves are occupied by my 1985 horizontal. The top two shelves in the fridge are my version of death row - odds and ends that don't fit on another shelf or are mature and ready to drink. My magnums are at the very bottom of the fridge because that's where they fit.

I take a somewhate similar approach, with the top two port shelves in my wine fridge containing bottles that are "next for casual drinking" and "special occasions only" respectively (and this is replicated for wine). However, this does lead to the occasional rotation of bottles within the fridge - and when doing this i always wonder whether it is at all injurious to a bottle if the sediment is disturbed on a semi-regular basis by moving it from shelf to shelf within the fridge or by moving it in and out in order to gain access to another bottle behind/below it (eg: once every couple of months ).

Due to lack of space in a small London flat, the fridge does not contain more than 2 of the same bottle and any port/wine which i cannot imagine drinking in the next 2 years is banished to offsite storage...which is now a mass of odds/ends, nearly full cases/half cases and groups of bottles reserved for putative tastings (Niepoort vertical, 1982 horizontal, GC-SW-QH triple vertical). It really does need to be organised in some way over coming weeks...possibly using inspriation from this thread (though, like Andy, i do enjoy finding the odd bottle i forgot i had!)