I’m often asked about my wine cellar, and sometimes I can see from the way the eyes of my questioner glaze over that they’re expecting something which looks like the crypt of a cathedral or at the least the cellar of a Medieval castle in Scotland. They want cobwebs and the dust of centuries, also at least a few rare and exceptional bottles of the kind even serious wine collectors can only dream about. In short, it should be a dark and damp Wine Heaven on Earth illuminated only by a few flickering candles! The few people I actually took down there were therefore seriously disappointed when they found what you can see above: rows of plastic crates and cases between concrete walls with no hint of stone, wood, much less any serious cobwebs. The only dust is from the plaster on the walls and ceiling crumbling, the only light is from fluorescent tubes of the standard kind.
But for me it is still a romantic place, because of the wine in the bottles. In his poem ‘L’ame du vin’ Charles Baudelaire wrote about the soul of wine being imprisoned behind the glass of the bottle, waiting to be released by the drinker, and that’s exactly how I see it today. Of course, some of this is also in my mind in the form of memories of the people who made those wines, the places the grapes grew, and situations in which I previously experienced them. What you see is just packaging (at the front of the picture literally so, those being the labels of Keller in Flörsheim-Dalsheim/Rheinhessen and of Sinß in Windesheim/Nahe). Frankly, that is all ballast weighing the wines down. I dread to think what the carbon footprint of all the glass bottles in my cellar is (of course, I recycle), and hope one day a better technical solution will be found. Some are ridiculously and unnecessarily heavy, particularly those for the GGs (Großes Gewächs). VDP please take note and address this problem, because currently you’re in denial!
The other thing which immediately strikes me when I go into my cellar is that there is a ton of wine in there, maybe 2,000 bottles (my list isn’t complete so I can’t calculate exactly). Is this too much? The library function of my cellar is undeniable and it really does help me build up a picture of how the important wines of earlier vintages taste now, which also tells me something useful about the producers responsible for them. Of course, that’s all good for my work as a wine journalist. However, in retrospect, there was a time when I took it all too far. By that I mean there was an obsessive-compulsive aspect to my wine purchases. If you suffer from Obsessive-Compulsive Personality Disorder (OCPD is the correct name not the widely-used OCD), or have a close friend/relative who suffers, then you know what I’m talking about. If not I promise you that suffering impacts many parts of your life. I’m trying to overcome, or at least, to seriously dampen down this side of my personality, so I’ve put much less wine in the cellar the last couple of years.
And, yes, I did buy almost all the wine that went into this cellar. Winegrowers who sent wine presents that went beyond one bottle at Christmas received bottles from me in return and/or dinner invitations which included wine from my cellar. A couple of wine merchants sent me single expensive bottles, generally of French wine. These were always put to good use in blind tastings. The only wines I ever asked producers for were samples for specific tastings, and that is a strict policy. A lot of wine from this cellar was poured without charge at charity events in Germany and New York. I am not perfect, nor can I be, but I try to be straight, fair and, most importantly, to share.
