My Wine Cellar Journey

I'm Tom Bain and this is Wine, Money & Song. If you're interested in wines and wanting to find out the best values, please subscribe. So today I'm going to talk about wine collecting and I've been collecting wine for over four years and a lot of times I get requests, but what's in your cellar? And what we're going to do today is we're going to get in the car and we're going to take a trip to my cellar and I'm going to show you how I have it organized and I'm going to put some insight on my philosophy of what I've done in the past and I've changed my philosophy now or what am I doing now. So we decided today we're going to load the car up. We're going to go over to the storage facility and we're going to take a look in my storage room and hopefully you'll enjoy. So we're here at the storage facility and I rented a big room and as you see on the left-hand side of the shot you see all the wooden cases. These are Bordeaux and classified Bordeaux mainly and on the bottom I have the first growths and these vintages here are the most recent. It starts at 2020. I have a few. I have some coming in. I have some 19s and 16s and 15s and then the older wines as you go down and when you make a total circle around here you'll see the older wines are there and I have some Magnums bigger sizes on this side but right here going down this is all Bordeaux. There's some bottles but let's take a trip down to the end and we'll get some more shots. This is a reverse shot of the original one you just saw but you see the bins at the end. Now I actually built these racks myself. It was a kit but I'm still proud I was able to put some nails in and attach it to the wall and I think they look nice and what's in there are bottles that I have maybe three or four left or wines that I'm gonna drink soon but that's what's on the wall and I'm gonna come back and show you some of the better Bordeaux's in a minute or two. So on the left side of the other half of this storage room is the older Bordeaux's. These are 86s, 85s, 82s are over there and we go down to 1975 but I don't have much past 1979. I just have some bottles but I have a case of 1975 Ikem but generally as we go down it's older Bordeaux. So this section here are my Burgundy's. I really didn't start getting serious about Burgundy till I moved back to the East Coast about 15 years ago because I had all this Bordeaux and I said hey I have to have some Burgundy and all this Burgundy with champagne at the bottom and I bought very heavily in 2005, 2009, 2010, some 2002s and and 15s. The prices of Burgundy have gone crazy so very little of that's going on and I have some more on this side too but generally that's these are where all my Burgundy's are and maybe I have 75 cases of really good Burgundy Premier Cru and Grand Cru. And you see a whole shot of my bins lining up the south-facing wall and it makes it much easier for me to put four or five bottles of something all together instead of having them all over the place. So I like the way it looks it's very clean and I know where everything is so that's helpful. And I have some California wines here I have Diamond Creek you know I have two or three of each vintage which goes scattered. I really like Bedrock a lot so I have several cases here of Bedrock too. And over here if you can just switch it a little bit here I have Magnums here this is where all my Magnums are and I have two or three bottles you know I have Magnums of Maricamis one of my favorite wines one of my top five growths from California. I have some Burgundy I have some really good Rioja wines here but it's odds and ends I buy at auction or I have a few leftover that I've used already. So those are my bins and I'd like to show you a few of my special wines. So we here I'm going to show you a few of my favorite wines or special wines. I do have Petrus this is a six pack of the 2000 and I have several of them. And as I said I bought these wines when they were probably a third of the price of what they are now. I got some Tratenoise we got some Latour 2000 here this is where on the bottom where it's coolest I keep the better wines the first growths and if we pan over here I have Magnums here boxes of Magnums and if you can get a close-up over here I have La Mission Aubriant 98 which I consider to be a great wine that's in Magnums. What else do I have that's mint there's a few others 1990 Montrose in Magnums very very an incredible wine. We have let's see what else is special Lynch Barge 85 and 89 in Magnum. Two very different wines 85 Lynch Barge is very elegant and beautiful while the 89 is very powerful and really rich. 95 Mouton Rothschild excellent excellent Mouton Magnum case of Magnums of Lafitte 1990 Cheval Blanc 95 Magnums and Grand Prix Lacoste 2010 Magnums and I have a whole bunch of Magnums of it under here too but you know there's some famous ones 85 Aubriant which is a classic Aubriant right here 1990 Margaux, Ponte Cane, La Tour Magnums 1990 some of them are hiding behind here but that's where I have the Magnums and here here I start Italian wines this is Productory 2016 great wines great wines I stocked up on them and Chianti's, Barolo's, Giacomo Conterno Francia 2006-7 all of these wines Brunello's, Chianti's, 2017 Productory right here and a lot of Barolo's right here a lot of Barolo's, Brovia more Conterno, more Productory and these are Magnums, loose Magnums of Bordeaux also that are plugged in but let's take a journey on the other side just quickly and I have more burgundies here I have some Rumier 1999 Beaumar which is a heavy hitter I have a lot of Gerdau wines that I bought at good prices and and from really good vintages and we start California wines here I'm very very heavy on I bought a lot of Ries Pinot Noir I like them I have them here stacked up I have a lot of Maya Camas and take a look at Dominus here I have all these cases of Dominus just get these into pictures this is all Dominus that's Dominus I have three liters and I have a six liter somewhere and and and there's more early Dominus bigger size Dominus more Dominus Dominus here this is a six liter 94 I was involved when Dominus first came into being that Christian Muex was doing a lot of business with us and wanted us to sell his wines so I have Maya Camas up there and I have a lot of Ridge wines also which is my favorite wines and when we review the wines I will go into that more but a lot of Ridge wines all over the place so let me just show you one or two things on the way out and obviously the 82s are over here somewhere I said I still have maybe ten cases of 82s here's Brown Adder Crew, Leo Villascaz here 82 Canon 82 Latour Aubryon more Canon I have some Pavi my mistake I don't mean the Chevalier and and the first grocer run beneath here and there's Petrus 82 is it 82 it should be yep some Margot left over and other cases of Petrus 85 so let's go around finish out this okay and before we leave before we leave I was wandering around sorting things out and I saw this bottle in a bag and I took it out and it was a bottle of Ravigneaux Clos 1999 and I didn't know I had a bottle left and this bottle goes for four or five thousand dollars and I thought I drank it all but I found a spare bottle laying around so it's good to look around so basically this is how I have my cellar and as I said I'm not buying the first growths anymore because of the prices and a lot of the Grand Crew burgundies too but this is what I have and I'm very proud of it and hopefully I'm gonna live long enough to drink it so we're back at the studio and hopefully you enjoyed my little view of my wine collection and hopefully you understand where I was and where I'm going but I picked very carefully what I bought and I concentrated in certain areas and once wines become too expensive I stop and I find something else that interests me but if you go back to one of our last episodes the the first growths of California Cabernets at the top I put Ridge Montebello that I thought is my favorite California Cabernet based wine and it's not a Napa Valley wine it's a Santa Cruz mountain wine which has more minerality to it and it's a cooler region so what I decided to do how much I loved it I was buying six to twelve bottles of fifths I started buying some Magnums and then all of a sudden I said hey if this is the best I'm going to concentrate on it so I have bought a collection of three liters of Ridge Montebello and starting with 2003 I would like to show you my collection and I'm very proud of it. Okay just to explain why I have collected one wine short of 15 consecutive Ridge Montebellos I feel that Ridge is in my humble opinion my favorite California based Cabernet and they've been making great wines for over 60 years and I really enjoy them and I think it's unique collecting three liter bottles so after I'm dead they're gonna have some party you know so let me start out and most of these wines I bought at auction I didn't buy retail maybe three or four of them I bought retail but the vast majority at auction. All right I'm going to start with 2003 and 2004 Montebello and I don't consider them to be one of the great ventures although wines are very good beautifully made aging very well I really favor 2005. 2005 I love it's very elegant and to me it's one of the few ridges I would ever say that's Bordeaux like but I find that it's very Bordeaux like very balanced and elegant and I really love the 2005 it isn't the favorite one you know I've had the name the 90 91 and 93 no the 90 the 91 and 92 triumphant but everyone says it's great but I think 2005 is right in there. Then we go to 2006 which isn't the greatest Montebello but very sturdy. 2007 wine maker Paul Draper called it one of his greatest wines and I like it immensely too I still think it needs a few more years to get into balance. 2008 is a very very short harvest very little was produced and the yields in 2008 where I think maybe a thousand maybe a thousand per acre it was very very low yields very low so there's very small amount of 2008 but I think it's underrated and I think it has elegance. Then we go to 2009 and 2010 I'm gonna couple together both excellent vintages 10 was a cooler vintage but both of these wines are stellar stellar wines. The 2011 is kind of light and a middling vintage for Montebello but still very very well made and that brings us to the 2012 which is another vintage which was highly received and a beautifully balanced wine and and all of these wines by the way they age for 25 30 years mostly and they go strong I've never had a rid well there was a few vintages that were a little iffy in the beginning and after the 2012 2013 which is a profound vintage of Ridge Montebello profound and it's because it's going to be considered one of the great ridges in history and then we go to 2014 what's going on here it looks like an empty casket and there's a question mark 2014 well that's one I still have to get and and I will get it I will get it and and these bottles don't come up very often I'll see maybe one or two three times a year it'll pop up and I have to seize it so once I put that in I'll have 15 in a row and I will buy the 18 and 19 down the road all right after the 14 hopefully you'll be resting soon in your nice cradle there so 2015 and the 2016 excellent wines very very bridge like and they're just in their emphasis you know infancies and and you know they're gonna really put on weight and and really mellow out and it brings us to the last line of this vertical 2017 and 2017 is some Ridge Montebello it is a formidable vintage it's a big vintage and and it's rich and it's gonna be considered maybe with the 13s the five and the seven and 91 the 90s 91 and 92 so here is my collection I'm very proud of it and I will fill in the 14 hopefully soon and I will buy the 18 and 19 as they come available so those are my babies there I'm very proud of that and hopefully you enjoy