Think Spring (Cleaning) for Your Wine Cellar and Wines

Finally, it’s springtime in the northern hemisphere! Our snows are receding farther and farther north, the sun is feeling spring warm, and just yesterday I noticed the very first buds of spring in our yard – on our lilac!

So as we enter spring it’s not only time to begin daydreaming about summer vacation plans, but also spring cleaning! Sure I’ll do the normal cleaning and de-junking of stuff, but I’ll have to wait until it stays above freezing at night for washing the windows outside. But until then I’ll stick to indoor spring cleaning and I’ll begin with spring cleaning our wine cellar!

Here are the simple steps I will follow to give my wines the spring cleaning they deserve and always seem to need:

1. Bottle Hang Tags Check: I first do a quick eyeballing of my wine to make sure I have hangtags identifying each variety/vintage/winery of my bottles. As careful as I try to be all year long, inevitably I put some wine away and don’t put a tag on it – making it basically invisible. Not a good thing! I scribble the vintage, winery, and varietal or style on each tag, which is very helpful for visitors looking to pick a dinner wine to bring to the table.

2. Physical and Electronic Inventory Check: This will be the biggest portion of my spring cleaning. I use CellarTracker as my inventory system so I will open that up and do a physical counting of our wines listed there. While I do my best during the year to keep CellarTracker correct, there are times a bottle gets pulled and not registered just like there are times a family member or friend grabs a bottle and I don’t make note of it. So I count and click to make sure my physical count matching my electronic record. I try not to get too anal with this step, but it is worth it!

3. Drinkability Check: No one wants to waste a single drop of wine, let alone a bottle! So each spring I run a quick report out of CellarTracker using their ‘drinkability’ report. I may not agree with all the dates they use for when to best drink a wine, but it really helps me keep an eye on some of those bottles I have, which I forget are there, or have made it to the back of the cooler since it is not a crowd favorite. The fun part of this is when I discover a stray that ready to be drunk so I can have a reason to pop its cork for dinner!

4. Varietal Balance Check: I find this very helpful as I think about the future! We all know the wine business is ripe with trends and favorites. For instance just a couple years ago you had to struggle to find a good Napa Cabernet Franc and now everyone and their aunt and uncle are making them. In a different aspect to this, my favorite varietal is a 100% Petit Verdot, which is never on anyone’s trend line, but can be found in Napa Valley with some searching. I also like to be able to offer our guests a variety of wines when they visit, so I need to be aware of what I have in the racks. So a quick listing of what varietals I have is in order.  After all, those favorites tend to disappear all too quickly!

5. Revisit the Stories: The best part of spring cleaning my wines is how I can so easily get lost in reliving the stories each of the bottles hold for me! It slows the process down, but for a very good reason! There is little better than recalling a visit when you bought a wine, who you were with, how fun the experience was, where you were, how friendly the staff or winery dogs were, and on and on!

This last one makes the whole process worthwhile and a heck of a lot of fun!

Cheers!