A Cellar Full of Treasures

I clearly remember arriving at the brickworks in Surrey. It was many years ago now, probably 1998 or 1999. The place had the feel of a small airstrip: the sort where Cessnas slumber in rusty hangars, waiting to be taken out at weekends by owners flying their friends to lunch in northern France.

It certainly didn’t look like the sort of place one would expect to find a cellar of fine wine.

We stopped the car beside a small, dowdy-looking, two-storey building. Upstairs were offices, below twin garage roller doors. Were we even in the right place? I wondered.

All quickly became clear.

Behind the garage doors lay a treasure trove to set any wine lover’s heart racing. Seemingly untouched for years, swathed in dust and cobwebs and the detritus left by a battalion of mice, was the wine collection we were to catalogue.

The back wall was divided into bins, each perhaps three feet square. Facing them, in free-standing, interlocked stacks were walls of vintage port. At the left-hand end stood a few wine racks containing odd bottles, their identities occluded by decades of filth.

We set to work. For two whole days, we methodically noted down the contents of the “cellar”.

At the end of the second day, thinking we were finished, I thought I'd better have a look under the last bin, just in case anything was tucked away out of sight.

And there it was: fifty-four bottles of 1959 Château Lynch-Bages.

The oldest bottle, found in one of the racks, was a 1906 claret. There was Champagne Krug from the 1960s; Leflaive white burgundies from the 1970s. The latter brings back a particularly vivid memory: with the owner's permission, we enjoyed a 1976 Puligny-Montrachet Premier Cru Les Pucelles over lunch at a nearby restaurant. I can still recall the aroma as the cork was withdrawn.

We found the sort of wine one would expect - claret, burgundy and red rhône - as well as things more arcane (that 1959 Moulin Touchais I remembered drinking quite regularly in the early 1990s but hadn't seen for some years).

And Port. Lots and lots of Port.

A Collection in Search of a Plan

The brickworks had been founded after the war and sold for a tidy sum by its owner in the late 1970s. He subsequently emigrated to kindlier climes in Europe.

By the time we arrived, the owner was quite long in the tooth and beginning to wonder what to do with the fruits of his collecting.

Was any of the wine worth anything? Should some of the wines be destroyed? Could a selection of the best bottles be bundled up and shipped to the owner's location? And what best to do with the rest? 

A pile of 1953 Château La Tour de Mons was a bit of a head-scratcher, at least until we tasted it: the best vintage ever at that property and still thoroughly delicious.

The collection was full of questions like these. Some bottles were undoubtedly valuable. Others might have been worth very little on the market but could still offer considerable pleasure. Some needed to be enjoyed sooner rather than later; others might have years ahead of them. And there was the practical business of deciding what to keep, what to move and what to sell.

More Than a Valuation

Yes, this was, in part, a valuation. 

First and foremost, it was an assessment: an exercise to give the owner clarity of thinking about a valuable asset.

A wine collection is not simply a list of bottles with prices attached. It is a collection of individual wines, each with its own history, condition, drinking window and potential. 

In this case, after two days "in the field", we were able to hand the owner a full report. He had a much clearer picture of what he owned and, crucially, a basis on which to decide what to do next.

It was, essentially, one more thing checked off a list of Things To Do.

What About Your Cellar?

Most private wine collections are rather less dramatic than the one hidden behind those garage doors in Surrey. But the underlying questions are often remarkably similar.

What exactly do I own? Which bottles are drinking well now? What should I be keeping, and what might be better sold? Are there wines that have been sitting untouched for years, simply because I haven't got around to deciding what to do with them?

And if I have spent years building a collection, how do I make the most of it now?

These are questions that deserve more than a price list or a sales pitch. They call for experience, independent judgement and an understanding of wine beyond its market value.

At Bowes Wine, we believe that good cellar advice starts with the wine you already own. The aim is to help you understand your collection, identify the opportunities and make informed decisions about what comes next — whether that means drinking, keeping, selling or simply enjoying the pleasure of knowing what you have.

Because the point of collecting wine, after all, is not just to own it. It is to make the most of it