2011 – The year of drinking down my wine cellar

Over the years, I’ve realized that I have way more wine than I need. If this were merely an extra case or two sitting around the obvious “drink more” would apply. Unfortunately, in my pre-kid days, my wine budget greatly exceeded my (much more limited) common sense – there was so much to try, and, not surprisingly (from hindsight) I didn’t like some of it.

Twice in the past I’ve attempted to right size my cellar by selling chunks of it off at auction. This worked well, but I’m now at a stage where I still have probably twice as much as I need, and it’s almost all geek bottles that don’t have a good potential for resale. So, I hereby declared 2011 the year of Drinking Down My Wine Cellar.

I figure that I need to cut it about in half. Step number 1 in this process is: Don’t buy any more wine. Not that I’ve been buying a lot over the past 5 years or so, but this year it’s zero (sorry Jeff and Paul!). Step number 2 was to dedicate one of my wine racks in the cellar to all the bottles that should/could be drunk this year – some are past their prime, others are out of favor with my palate preferences at the moment, some are just plain mysteries!

Step 3 was a mental realignment – I set myself free to pick any bottle from the “drink in 2011″ rack, at any time. Normally, wine selection at my house comes with a varying degree of (not unpleasant, but overwrought) anxiety over just what bottle to pull. Now, I just grab the first thing that catches my eye.

This has resulted in an uptick in the amount of wine being consumed, and the cellar depletion is continuing apace. I have (almost thankfully) pulled several bottles that I expected were bad, and found them to be so, and, almost gleefully, poured them down the drain. But, I’ve also found some gems – a ’98 Ridge York Creek Zin being the prime example so far.