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Loading up your wine rack for the holidays for under $1,000
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The dreaded empty wine rack
Have you looked at your wine rack lately, it’s pathetic! More than likely, it is down to bare bones if it has anything left in at all. The summer is over and before you know it, holiday season is going to be here. That means lots of visitors and fancy dinner parties that you are going to have to have a lot of wine for. It is time to reload the old wine rack and I am going to show you how to do it without emptying out your bank account.
I am in the same boat as every one of you and have to fill my 63 bottle rack and don’t want to spend a lot of money to do it. At the same time, I would like to have quality wines that I can pour en masse that everyone will be happy with. Of course, there is also the need for a few special bottles that will be for those quiet nights when you just want to sit back and enjoy a great bottle of wine. This can all be accomplished by not spending more than $25 on a single bottle and by not spending more than $1,000 overall. It’s going to take a little work, but that full rack sure will look wonderful when it is all said and done.
The very first thing that we need to do is look at what we and our friends are going to be drinking. What kind of meals are going to be made and how many people are going to be coming over. This is of particular importance because there must be enough of the same wine to pour over dinner without running out. These are the wines that we will look for true bargains on so that we can spend a little extra on the bottles that are for our enjoyment.
The two holidays that are coming up are Thanksgiving and Christmas, and this means that a lot of white meat, pasta with hearty red sauces, fish and just a few beef dishes in between. For my rack, I have 63 spots to fill and want enough of a variety that I can keep everyone, including myself, happy with the bottles that get opened up every night. I know just as many white drinkers as I do red, but prefer reds with just about everything.
Because we lean more towards red (as do most of our friends), we need to get some flexible bottles that will compliment traditional white wine dishes. With seven rows of wine to fill, we are looking at three rows of whites and four rows of reds. Out of that mix, there has to be enough variety to satisfy all tastes and also the flexibility to match up with a variety of dishes.
In order to accomplish this, it is best to put pen to paper and have a general idea of what each row of your wine rack is going to look like when everything is done. This is by no means a concrete plan, just something to steer you in the right direction as you are making your purchases. You never want to get too caught up in one type of wine and overfill your rack. For my purposes, my chart looks something like this:
PG PG PG PG PG R R R R
V V V SB SB SB SB SB SB
C C C C C C C C C
B B B T T T CH CH CH
PN PN PN PN PN PN PN PN PN
SH SH SH ME ME ME ME ME ME
CA CA CA CA CA CA Z Z Z
PG = PINOT GRIGIO, R = RIESLING, V = VIOGNIER, SB = SAUVIGNON BLANC, C = CHARDONNAY, B = BEAUJOLAIS, T = TEMPRANILLO, CH = CHIANTI, PN = PINOT NOIR, SH = SHIRAZ/SYRAH, ME = MERLOT, CA = CABERNET, Z = ZINFANDEL
As you can see, we are loaded up on chards and pinot noirs. Both of these wines are going to go with just about anything you serve for dinner on both holidays and there will be an ample supply of them to go around. Within each of those rows, I plan on having two to three different types to hit the various characteristics that separate one from another. For instance, a nice stainless steel chardonnay along with an oak aged chardonnay that tastes like dripping butter. The same can be said for the pinot noirs. We can have a few of the lighter ones that focus on hints of strawberry as well as a few bottles of heartier pinot noir that are packed with dark fruits and black cherry flavors. This rack will truly have something for everyone.
I invite you all to join me on this wonderful journey of filling up a 63 bottle wine rack from scratch that will have all of our friends drooling with envy. We have our game plan ready and now it is just a matter of doing some research to fill up the slots and not spend a fortune in the process. We have three weeks to get this done and on Monday, we buy our first case to load our wine rack.
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