Avoid the Trap

[Roy Hersh]

Do not take this as a warning about loading up your cellar full with delicious young and old Port. When planning your Port buying strategy for the next year, decade or the rest of your life ... keep this in mind, as it will be true when you turn 40, 50, 60, 70 and however long you may live, thereafter. Those who are new to buying wine and even Port wine, really should take this to heart as the best advice I can give you:

So as not to squander your liquid assets, fastidiously plan and continue to monitor your specific rate of wine/Port purchases vs. your rate of consumption.

Many friends around the globe get caught up in the fever and fervor of the chase. All of us in this Forum, get caught up in it to some degree, some more than others. The chase to own the best, the biggest, the most ... bottles and cases of Port and wine in general. It becomes an all consuming "purchasing addiction". For those of you who have been doing this and are still young enough to correct the balance, NOW is the time to do the math. By doing so, you can see if you are drinking even remotely at the same rate that you are buying more wine. Trust me, there are many of 70+ year old wine lovers who are sitting on treasure troves of mature wines in their cellar. That sounds great, right?

Well if you will never get to drink most of what is left in your cellar at the end of your life, then I'd say ... not so great. Likely there is still plenty of time to correct the balance. Heck, you may even find that given how much you are drinking nowadays, you need to start buying at a faster clip to keep up.

From my experience and listening to wine loving friends who have been collecting wine/Port for multiple decades, their rate of consumption seems to tank sometime after 60 or so, maybe it will be 70 for you. But when you get older, do the math more frequently. IF you are still in your early to mid-thirties or thereabout, you may think this is blather from an old man. Please do feel free to ignore this advice.

I am not trying to convince you to stop buying or even suggesting you slow down. I am only imploring you to keep a healthy balance between your purchasing and consumption ratio and take this into account from here forward!

The alternative, is to ensure that your family is able to pour great quantities of amazing wines at your send off.

[Mike K.]

Wise words.

You can't take it with you, and unless your kids are as into wine as you are, they're just going to dump it or drink it with spritzer.

[Moses Botbol]

At our house, the two of us go through 300-400 bottles of wine and/or port a year. Most of which is just every day kind of stuff. Of that count, probably 30-40 bottles are port? I have slowed on buying vintage port, but not colheita which I do not sit on.

[Lindsay E.]

This sounds like advice that could be appropriate for all wine collecting in general (not exclusively port). Just out of curiosity, how many bottles of wine do you all think you consume annually? I reviewed my CellarTracker account which shows that I've recorded 122 bottles consumed in the last year. However, I rarely do TN for Champagne and sparkling wines, so there's another 30 wines. I'd say that there has got to be at least 30 additional wines that I forgot to record on CT (30 is a conservative estimate). So that puts me at approximately 180 bottles consumed this year (my fiancee also drinks some of the wine I open). How many bottles have you guys/gals opened in the last year?

[Glenn E.]

My rate of consumption of bottles taken from my cellar is pretty low. Part of that is because I drink so much Tawny which you don't normally store, but part of it is also that I just don't drink as much as others here.

I think I end up removing ~24 bottles a year from my cellar. Possibly 36... I do take bottles to every BBQ competition that I judge. Sadly, I'm still purchasing more than that every year and I've run out of storage space! I have no idea where the 4 cases from the latest buying opportunity are going to go...

[Phil W]

That's easy Glenn, just ship any boxes you can find in your cellar with the word Mourao on them to me, and I'll "store" them for you, without even charging you; problem solved and you'd never have to worry about finding space for them again [WINKING FACE]

[Glenn E.]

That's easy Glenn, just ship any boxes you can find in your cellar with the word Mourao on them to me, and I'll "store" them for you, without even charging you; problem solved and you'd never have to worry about finding space for them again [WINKING FACE]

Stay away from my Mourao!

[Tom Archer]

There is, I am told, a Portuguese saying, which, when translated amounts to the following question and answer:

'Who will drink this vintage port?'

'- God knows, for we will be dead by then'

And much closer to home (for me..) is the personal mantra of the Gibson family of Saffron Walden, who were both successful commercially and also philanthropic Quakers:

'Build as though you will live forever, live as though you will die tomorrow'

We all enjoy drinking vintage portss that were laid down by others no longer with us.

To tailor one's purchases to match one's own needs and nothing besides is fundamentally selfish..

Sorry Roy..

[Scheiny S]

if any of you have children who won't appreciate your wine collections, especially fortified wines, please leave said collections to me, instead. i promise to love and cherish them.

[Mike K.]

That's the issue with 'collections' of most anything. When you are gone, your family will often have little appreciation and no idea how to best unload it.

One of my local friends and I have a mutual understanding that we will handle each other's cellar. This means separating out the common stuff for the family if they want it, and keeping the good stuff.

[Al B.]

Tom and I have occasionally had late evening conversations about the concept of creating a Port Library. The idea would be that you form a club with, say 10 members. Each member pays an annual membership fee of 1 case of 12 bottles of a recently released vintage port plus sufficient cash to cover storage costs and other expenses (about £40-50 per month, per person at today's prices).

In return, each member is permitted to withdraw from the library 12 bottles of port of their choice in accordance with a certain age profile. The age profile could be something along the lines of:
1 bottle of 80 years age or more
1 bottle 70-79 years of age
2 bottles 60-69 years of age
3 bottles 50-59 years of age
3 bottles 40-49 years of age
1 bottle 30-39 years of age
1 bottle 20-29 years of age

Provided it started with the right age profile, to support 10 people consuming 12 bottles of port each you'd need a cellar of about 6,250 bottles. Pool a few of our collections and we could create something quite big and quite interesting.

[Bert VD]

an interesting topic and still a bit odd for me as i'm only 31 and i don't know any other port enthousiasts nearby to share with so i don't drink so much port.
and as most of my vintage collection are young affordable ports i am not drinking those right now. i stick mostly to LBV's waiting for my ports to mature.

[Roy Hersh]

Bert,

That is a very smart move. I like your strategy and only suggest one small variance. Open one each -- of those young Vintage Ports and take careful notes, at 15 or expecially by 20, so you can have two excellent reference points and see how beautiful they are at these stages. Then wait until you believe they are ready to drink and don't wait until you are sixty!

You are doing it the right way. However, I'd look for one case of a solid Port "cellar defender" like the Souza's offered in the buying op last year and have something to drink as your age appropriate "house" Vintage Port too, that won't break the bank.

[Bert VD]

well, i don't have more than 2 bottles of any port... buying a case would be a first

but i'm looking at auctions now and then as well.

[Roy Hersh]

Join us on the slippery slope of Port buying, Bert!

[Gerwin de Graaf]

Looking at my excell-wine-records, I just looked some things up:
- I purchased my first 6 bottles of Port in august 2007, as a form of research I guess to see if I liked it enough to buy into VP 2005 (the birthyear of my oldest son). It was a Graham's 10 yo Tawny (at a great price at the time ). I liked it, and my 2nd purchase was Taylor's 10 yo Tawny.
- After some searching and getting advice from a wineshop owner that I have in high regards and trust fully, I bought into the 2005 Vintage, with bottles getting into my possession in november 2007.
- From that point on, I was on the slippery slope , with my second son being born in 2007 .
- And now, exactly 10 years later (+ 1 month), 44.50% (or, well over 600 bottles) of my total wine collection is Port, and 40,11% is Vintage port (ok, that includes the bottles which I specifically bought for my sons, which rest in their designated wine-racks ). Including to bottles consumed, I come close to 800 bottles of Port since 2007.
- But that percentage excludes the VP's that my dad bought as well from the 05 and 07 Vintages for his grandsons ... So my boys will have a lot of nice VP's to look forward to, especially from their birthyears

So, how slippery is my slope do you think, and have I fell into the trap???

[Tom Archer]

Tom and I have occasionally had late evening conversations about the concept of creating a Port Library. The idea would be that you form a club with, say 10 members. Each member pays an annual membership fee of 1 case of 12 bottles of a recently released vintage port plus sufficient cash to cover storage costs and other expenses (about £40-50 per month, per person at today's prices).

I'm still refining the detail, but I am resolved to ultimately bequeath my collection to a trust.

One aspect I'm playing seriously with is the notion of the 'self funding cellar' - loosely conceived as a cellar that sells 90 mature bottles p.a. at twice replacement cost, and uses the funds raised to purchase 180 bottles at release - thereby generating another 90 mature bottles for nominally 'free' consumption. The physical storage space to house the collection would form part of the bequest, so the only real costs would be insurance, maintenance and admin. These in turn could be partly if not wholly offset by rental income from property included with the bequest.

The challenge is to create a system of rules and checks to prevent the bequest from being subsequently abused..

- that, I am working on..

[John Trombley]

Of course the idea of calculating replacement rates and cellar stock levels is emphasized by Hugh Johnson. To simplify, you divide your cellar into more or less 'hand-to-mouth' simpler wines, to be consumed say within a year. How many of these do you drink per week or so forth? Multiply by an appropriate factor (like 12 for monthly usage) and there's your minimum stock, probably by about twice to get a comfortable and safe but not an over-maximum level. Divide by your preference into red, rosé, white, sparkly, dessert (including porto), So say you look over your notes for the last few months and determine you have removed from the cellar about 6 bottles per month. So shoot for between 72 and 144 bottles of these wines. In practice you don't have to store quite so many if you're not away from your usual 'suppliers', as little is to be gained by the cellaring, though perhaps some. So depending on circumstances you may be able to do with quite a bit less, and your own storage arrangements are expensive, too, remember. Worth letting someone else do the warehousing, unless you like some hard=to=get everyday wines.

You can get a little more deliberate with your wines that actually need cellaring. For each category determine how much tasting, entertaining, gifts, and so forth you're likely to do in a year, convert to bottles, and multiply by a factor representing your personal age preference on average. If you like your port on average between 10 and 20 years old (excluding age-dated tawnies, by the way), and you find your usage rate at, say, 6 bottles per year, you'll need an average of 22.5 years of age on each bottle. In order to do that, you need to have a stock of 150 bottles (6 times 22.5).

You can do this category by category. Madiera requires special treatment, because it's how long YOU are going to cellar it that counts. If the Madeiras that your're opening have been settling in your cellar for 5 years after purchase (not vintage), your stock level will need to be your usage rate per year (let's say, 2 bottles a month, 24 bottles per year, you may want to have as much as 120 bottles or more. I find this to be quite heavy usage for Madeira, because it takes so long to empty a bottle of it completely. And you may drink your Madeira in a more expeditious fashion, and can afford to buy as you go at auction or likewise. Now that Madeira's prices have gotten more realistic in relationship to other rarities, this may be the toughest call of all.

[Lisa Stevens]

John:

Vic and I follow a very similar methodology when it comes to how many bottles of wine we purchase. We like to have around 7 years of age minimum on our Washington and Oregon wines (a bit less for whites). We drink about 400 bottles a year including port and dessert wines. So if we want our cellar to provide us with the properly aged wines, we need around 2,800 bottles in our cellar. Of course, some types we drink more often than others. And port and dessert wines we drink less often than table wines. But in general, that is how we look at things. As to wine that is left when I die, really, who cares? You will be dead and not in a position to care. I would rather have properly aged wines to drink when I am living than worrying about drinking my last wine as my final breath leaves my body.

-Lisa

[John Trombley]

Thanks for the thoughts, Lisa. Mine exactly, I can see.

However, with the amount of wine that I have and the fact that due to my medical condition my wife will almost certainly outlive the drinking up of my bucket list, estate planning does become something of a concern, unless I want to let many dollars worth potentially be a grab bag for the rest of my family to potentially squabble over.

They all (I'm sure rightfully by their lights) care little about wine except perhaps its dollar value after I'm gone and its alcohol content. So while I don't obsess over whether I'll actually drink my last Yquem, I don't want her to be denied the use of it or its value. Right now I'm remembering 40 plus years of fantastic wine drinking and I'm buying at auction anything that I really loved, or anything that that experience shows me will bring me joy, mostly hand to mouth--looking for short lots (3 or 4 bottles of exellent provenance, drinking one soon on arrival, and having one or two more for later when my friends stop over to pay respects.)

In other words, for some of us, these decisions are fairly easy; for some they involve very personal decisions.