Rob's Overflowing Wine Cellars
6/3/08

My wife and I have been collecting wine together for the past 8 years. The problem with this is that as one gets more serious about buying great wine, one is forced to buy wine that won’t be ready to be drunk for many years. Thus, wine collectors are almost always buying for the future. As result, my wife and I now have more than 1,000 bottles of wine, and we are running out of room to store them all as we try to drink our way through them. These are good problems to have, although most people, including my staff, did not appreciate the breadth of this problem when it was discussed on air last week.

Here’s the bottle that started all of this. My dogs, Shep and Nellie, occasionally vacation at Dogwoods resort in Garden Valley (http://www.dog-woodsresort.com/) and recently, the sister proprietors of Dogwoods, Teresa and Helen, sent the RAD show a gift basket.


I, of course, Bogarted the spectacular bottle of wine they sent (a 2005 Caymus Special selection) , much to the chagrin of Dawn, since I have no where to put the damn thing!

Thus begins the problem. We have run out of room to store wine in our 4,000+ square foot home. This wine closet houses about 300 bottles of wine, ready to be drunk at any time. As you can see, I can barely fit in there with all of the wine.

Even wine closets should be decorated properly. This is me holding one of our many stuffed wedges of cheese that compliment the wine storage room.

Adding to the décor is the map of Napa Valley on the back wall which Arnie made fun of on the air because he is a fat jerk.

Things are so tight in the closet that boxes of wine are forced to languish on the floor, waiting for a home.

As you can see, every shelf is packed with wine bottles, wine cases, and wine boxes and we are just plain out of room!

On the opposite wing of the house, we have two wine refrigerators which keep our wine stored at a perfect 59 degrees and house, at capacity, about 900 bottles.

The fridges are so packed that I have to find creative ways to shove wine in between other bottles and the cooling unit!

Even the floor of the fridge is packed, which presents a problem when a new case of wine arrives.

Not to worry, I will just hide the box of wine behind the bar until some space opens up. How cagey of me.

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