Recently I went through and did a complete stocktake of everything that I had. I had been doing some impulse purchases lately, so I wanted to make sure I was tracking everything that I had and that fridge space was being allocated sensibly.
This did not take as long as I thought, and I was very satisfied at the end. I now have a master spreadsheet with everything in it, and it is much easier to sort through the collection and find what I want.
There were some surprises in there, like some bottles that I had more of than I thought. There was some stuff that I have not seen in a while. The real interesting thing was sorting everything by year and seeing the gaps, especially when I limit the price. There are some years where I have very few bottles of anything (2001 is one of these, for example). And there are those where I have oodles of stuff to drink (2005). I think that this is mainy due to two factors – the time I started collecting and the tendency for fancy stuff to be released later than cheaper stuff (I can buy 2005 bin 128 right now, but 2002 Grange is not out yet).
There are still gaps in the recording, though. Ideally I would like to have a rating or two for each wine (or at least all of the stuff above 50 bucks). Tracking this down takes time, though. Having a good drinking range estimate for each wine is another goal. So far biting off a little at a time to do this has been fairly successful, so maybe in a few months I will be closer.
