What is your inventory level?

[Gwand]

I am an old timer at drinking wine but brand new at making wine. I have 24 gallons of various Eclipse kits in the making. In my cellar I am still aging some 1982 and 1990 Bordeaux. Now that takes discipline.

 

[pjd]

I have somewhere near 2,500 bottles in the cellar and 35 carboys full to be bottled, bummed out that I cant run any local or California juices this fall, The Chilean just is not ready to bottle. My goal is to make enough wine to put me on a 5 year rotation. I love big bold dry red wines and it is a great pleasure to go to the cellar, select a 3 year old Cab or Shiraz to enjoy! In a couple of years I will be opening 5 year old wines.

 

[Tess]

thats funny Rocky!! For those of you that have 1000 plus bottles? WTH are you gonna do with all that wine? Start drinking for crying out loud. If I drank a bottle every day for my rest of my life I might leave wine!! I cant see leaving wine!!

 

[Tess]

Please dont think Im being a smart A**. This is where I learned wine peaks and starts going down hill. Help me to understand why anyone would have over 1000 bottles of wine. Im new, I humbled

 

[vernsgal]

thats funny Rocky!! For those of you that have 1000 plus bottles? WTH are you gonna do with all that wine? Start drinking for crying out loud. If I drank a bottle every day for my rest of my life I would might leave wine!! I cant see leaving wine!!

you can't age it well enough if you don't have enough on hand to keep you going.

 

[Julie]

Like vernsgal said, it's all about aging and for me I have a daughter who will be getting g married in the next year or two and I want o make sure I have enough aged wine. My goal is to have over a thousand bottles by next year and that is with giving wine away

 

[Thig]

Please dont think Im being a smart A**. This is where I learned wine peaks and starts going down hill. Help me to understand why anyone would have over 1000 bottles of wine. Im new, I humbled

Tess I think it is like a drug, I said I wanted to get to 300 bottles and then I would stop. I am now a little over 300 and I am saying when I get to 500 I will stop. I am not sure I will. I buy a lot real Port and I get almost as much pleasure finding it and buying it as I do drinking it. I said almost.

 

[Runningwolf]

Like the others said, if it's a red then aging it is on your side. I had an abundance of whites and semi sweets last year so I didn't make any in order to burn through several hundred bottles or more. This year I can start making more and by the time it's ready I'll have gone through a lot more of it. In the future I won't make so much of the short term wines (2-3 years). Remember most all of us have admitted our obsession to making wine.

 

[Boatboy24]

About 230 in cases or on racks. Oops, make that 229. Another 300 in process.

 

[derunner]

Thanks for making this an interesting thread. All this wine making takes a lot of storage.

I have a table I ferment on that holds 8 buckets/carboys. I have built a 6 carboy dolly and just built 2 smaller 1x3 carboy dollies so now I can hold 20 carboys/buckets total. I have racks for 437 bottles which are not full, but have 540 bottles worth in carboys or to make in the next few weeks. So I'll need more racks by next spring/summer when I bottle. I plan to make a 308 bottle rack to put under my table. Keeping up with this hobby is work

I don't have this many carboys yet, but am looking for deals on craigslist.

 

[Tess]

you guys crack me up!! I promise I will never judge!!just dont judge me when Im on here at my 1, 000 mark. I hope im still here at my 1000 mark!!

 

[Tess]

You know thats gotta be wonderful though. Id love to make the wine for my daughter or my son's wedding. Out of three kids I have one left. Im not going to go into details so dont ask. its been hard. My third and last is already married. I wish I had taken this up then. Its a blessing Julie!! Enjoy!!

 

[sour_grapes]

I have just been working out the math of how many bottles one needs to have on hand to meet one's ongoing needs. (I was trying to figure out how many wine racks to build!)

Here are my assumptions: I wish to make a kit, let it age a certain time, and then consume the bottles at a constant rate over a few years (its shelf life). The variables are:

R bottles consumed/yr
A initial aging time (yrs)
S shelf life after aging (yrs)

I claim you need approximately R*(A + S/2) bottles.

For example, I hope to initially age my wines for 1.5 yrs (A=1.5 yr), and then to keep some of them on the shelf for up to 4 yrs (S=4 yr). To support my roughly 4 bottles a week habit (R=208 bottles/yr), therefore, I should plan on having room to store R*(A + S/2) = 208 b/yr*(1.5yr + 4 yr/2) = 208*3.5 = 728 bottles.

In steady state, you will be adding R bottles to this pile each year, and consuming the same number.

If you are interested in where the S/2 comes from, it stems from the fact that your drinkable bottles have been on the shelf, waiting to be drunk, an average of S/2 yrs. (Many have been on the shelf for 0 yrs, fewer of them 1 yr, fewer yet for 2 yrs, etc.) I did not see that at first, and found a (slightly more accurate) result by summing a mathematical series. After finding the result, it's origin was suddenly obvious.

 

[tonyt]

Sour Grapes that's fantastic. By your formula I need 600 bottles. If I add what I have aging in carboy I am there. Or do I only count what is in bottle?

 

[Julie]

You know thats gotta be wonderful though. Id love to make the wine for my daughter or my son's wedding. Out of three kids I have one left. Im not going to go into details so dont ask. its been hard. My third and last is already married. I wish I had taken this up then. Its a blessing Julie!! Enjoy!!

I already made wine for my som's wedding. He got married three years ago. It was just awesome, I actually got all the little old ladies drunk! We had put a bottle of wine on each table and supplied the bar. All these ladies were going around asking people at other tables if they could have their wine. The cookie table was nevertheless touched!

 

[jamesngalveston]

i love drinking my home made wine, and i enjoy giving it away more.
i have a huge collection of very rare whiskeys,brandies, and port wines. its hard to pass one of those up, for a bottle of home made wine. But I am learning.
i probably have 50 grand in my collection all total...and I wish I would have started to make wine very early in my youth...no telling where it would have let too.

 

[Thig]

i love drinking my home made wine, and i enjoy giving it away more.
i have a huge collection of very rare whiskeys,brandies, and port wines. its hard to pass one of those up, for a bottle of home made wine. But I am learning.
i probably have 50 grand in my collection all total...and I wish I would have started to make wine very early in my youth...no telling where it would have let too.

Impressive, I have only recently started buying and saving vintage ports and have been doing a lot of reading on collector bourbons.

 

[jamesngalveston]

about 25 years ago a friend opened up high end cigar shop. and he served very high end bourbons,whiskeys,scotches,and ports.
one day he invited me to come share a very rare port, and etc.
It was a very good time..afterward he told me that the port we had was 75.00 per glass and the whiskey was 125.00. changed the world for me.
and i become a collector..of sorts.
mostly i buy at private auctions..thats where the better stuff is.

 

[Crown_King_Robb]

Just me and my carboys....

11 gallons of Apfelwein (Im trying to wait a year)
8 gallons of Dragon Blood
6 gallons of Prickly pear skeeter pee
6 gallons of Prickly pear ala Jack Keller

Wine wine everywhere and not a drop to drink. (yet)

 

[Tess]

I already made wine for my som's wedding. He got married three years ago. It was just awesome, I actually got all the little old ladies drunk! We had put a bottle of wine on each table and supplied the bar. All these ladies were going around asking people at other tables if they could have their wine. The cookie table was nevertheless touched!

thats funny. I bet it was fun coming up with the personalized wedding labels