What are your Cellar Rules?
As a winemaker, and long before the Smidge brand was a reality, some household rules needed to be crafted around our cellar that avoided any unnecessary…let's say "surprises". While most of the wine in the house is consumed with family and friends – there are vintage hours, travelling, and wine dinners when I was not around to chat about a food and wine match, or if a particular bottle was perhaps best left unopened.
Equally on a wintery afternoon long before we were married (& before smart phones and google were a thing) at my now parents-in-law’s farm – my wife & her sister opened an old, and what they considered a somewhat unimpressively labelled red wine to sip over a game of cards in front of a fire. Put it this way, to date they’ve still not been able to replace that bottle – at least both will attest it was delicious!
With that memory indelibly etched in their history we decided household guidelines might be useful. Now we both consider our cellar marital property and what is mine is hers and vice versa - however every now and again there is a professional prerequisite for certain bottles not to be opened on a whim or at least so I could taste it.
We discussed having a rack that was a "free for all", anything in it could be taken, opened, cooked with, we talked about knowing vertical sets, specific vintages, or collected wines that maybe should not be in the racks of first reach. We discussed further study – not my best suggestion.
We decided these were impractical and would lead to nothing being taken from our cellar for 6 months a year. While our cellar is modest – like all cellars – it is at it’s best when it is used – that means a bi directional flow – as many wines that go in should also go out!
So we ended up with a simple 2 bottle rule – if there are 2 bottles or more of a particular wine, then either party can take whatever they wanted. While the system is not perfect it has worked well for the last upteen years. There is one exception that I can remember – a 6 pack of Roberto Voerzio Barolo that over the course of a long vintage became 1 bottle. This taught me 1) the system worked – there was at least 1 bottle left, 2) I learnt that Trish has a good palate and knows a good wine and 3)she learnt to google the cost per bottle before depleting the 6 pack (almost) in entirety!
No doubt as our children get older and begin to show an interest in wine, I am sure this rule will need some adjusting – or maybe we just need a lock!