Sometimes You Have to Let Go
Written By: Kasey Carpenter on Thu, Jul 19th 2007
If you could keep all of your cash in your closet and still have it earn the interest you wanted it to, would you? Of course not. Most of us recognize the inherent danger of keeping cash and valuables in our own home. Start ticking off all of the “what ifs” in your head and you begin to see how risky it is to have any significant amount of money or jewelry laying around the house.
So what about all those vintages that you have in your possession? You know, the ones that are nowhere near ready to drink? The ones you keep on eyeing every time you pass by the cellar. Indeed: Why on earth would you trust someone else to watch those bottles for you when you can have them right under your nose, in your own home?
Because it’s the smart thing to do. It might sound illogical—why would you ever leave your beautiful bottles of purple gold in someone else’s hands?— but the truth is that keeping your wines off-site is a far safer practice then keeping them at home.
Why?
1) Safety and Storage Conditions – Even if you have a custom built cellar, it is far better to use an outside facility due to the fact that you may not have a redundant power supply in the event of a power failure. Do you have a backup generator? Most off-site facilities do, and they guarantee their power supply as well as the proper maintenance of temperature and humidity. And the best ones go even further: I’ve seen some that employ finger print scanning, full video surveillance, a room full of diesel generators in case of an outage, and a pretty nice place to sit and have a glass if you’re so inclined.
2) Insurance – While your homeowner’s policy might say it covers losses such as wine, understand that 1) they may balk at a large figure, no matter what you have in the way of documentation to support it, and 2) you will only be refunded for the initial cost of the wine, not necessarily the fair market value, which of course defeats the purpose of sitting on the bottles in the first place. Many storage facilities offer insurance that will cover the cost to replace the wine (which is essentially fair market value).
3) Inventory Control – Off site storage facilities will generally allocate a given locker or section of one to your wines, giving you the ultimate say in what goes where. Some offer inventory services that can help in not only tracking bottles and cases, but can put together a handy report that you can use when it comes time to sell. Plus, having the wine accounted for in such a way and off of the premises will prevent you from grabbing a bottle on a whim and then forgetting to log it. This will save you the heartache of wondering, years down the road, what ever happened to that prized bottle.
4) Temptation – This is the big one. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been at someone’s house (or entertaining at my own) and have done this very thing: It’s after dinner and everyone’s pretty tanked up on wine as it is. And then someone starts talking about their new Pride allocation, or they see those bottles of Kosta Browne sitting in the cellar, or their 1990 Rhônes just laying there, collecting dust. The next thing you know, corks start getting pulled like lives depended on it. Grape-babies that are nowhere near ready to consume get poured for a group of already dull palates, and everyone nods in approval while secretly wondering why this wine tastes exactly like the last bottle. So storing your wine off-premises gives you what I like to call the out-of-sight-out-of-mind advantage. Keeping the cellar out of the house will prevent this kind of casual abuse of your collection. What’s better is that you can keep in your home cellar maybe a hundred bottles of the things that a) are ready to drink, b) you don’t mind popping and c) are financially expendable. You’ll be able to pull from these select bottles with impunity while allowing those other cases to lay in wait somewhere safely out of reach.
You keep your money in a bank. You keep certain funds in certain accounts – ready cash, long term investments, whatever. If you are serious about pursuing wine from a collector’s standpoint, you should do the same: Put your investments in long term storage, off site from your home, and keep the “cash flow” wines easily accessible.
You’ll find that the extra expense of keeping those wines out of harm’s (or your own) way will more than make up for the cost you’ll pay—both financial and emotional—if something happened to your favorites bottles.
