Today I went wine shopping. I bought 6 bottles because the store had a buy-6-get-20%-off sale going. As I slotted those bottles away into my shelf at home today I counted the total: I have 51 bottles of wine.

51 bottles is a good thing. ...Not because it's a lot but because it's a little! Years ago I had 100+ bottles in my collection, a situation I've referred to, jokingly, since then as "my drinking problem". The joke is that my problem is I buy wine faster than I drink it! (One of my friends pithily observed, "Really what you have is a shopping problem.")

Even with buying 6 bottles because there was a sale today— which comes after buying 3 last weekend when there was a different sale 😅— the new tally of 51 in my wine collection is actually less than earlier this year. In March I had 55... and I considered even that a good thing. I'm keeping my drinking shopping problem under control.

Back in March I also wrote about my hard liquor collection being a bit out of control. I've been working to tame it. Since then I've barely bought anything new, and I've been making a point of finishing off bottles that are close to empty. ...Not by saying, "Eh, only 4 shots left, bottoms up!" but by choosing, when I feel like enjoying a drink, liquor that's almost gone. I mean, why keep around lots of bottles with only a few shots left when I already have too many different bottles. I've knocked out two (mostly empty) bottles in the past month this way.

In the various retrospectives I wrote a month ago at the start of the year one I overlooked was my stash of booze.

Recall that years ago I diagnosed myself with a drinking problem— though not the one you may think. The problem is I don't drink enough! ...Well actually I do drink enough. The problem is really that while I enjoy drinking booze in moderate amounts I enjoy buying it in heavier amounts. If I don't carefully control my purchases my stashes of wine, beer, and liquor are prone to grow overfull, to the point that bottles and cans end up lined up on counters, and some older beverages go stale or spoil before I get around to enjoying them.

"Really what you have is a shopping problem, not a drinking problem," one of my friends assured me several years ago. Indeed, it's been by buying less more than drinking more that I've brought the two into balance. Though as anyone with a problem can tell you, maintaining balance takes constant effort.

So, how am I doing with my drinking shopping problem?

Wine: 70 Bottles ± 5

Wine is the biggest part of my alcohol collection. Several years back I set a target on its size. 75 bottles ± 5, I decided. While that may seem to the uninitiated like a lot of bottles, it was a calculation to give me enough to keep many varieties on hand and age them appropriately. It was a big step down from the 125 bottles I used to have. And even that isn't big for wine aficionados. Friends of mine who drink wine faster than I do have collections of 300+ bottles.

Across 2022 I actually held below my target of 75 as a midpoint. After maintain 75 ± 5 for a few years I actually did 70 ± 5 last year. I feel like I've still got a reasonable library with that slightly lower count so I'll look to continue at that level in 2023. As a data point I'm at 70 bottles right now (it was 71 until I opened a 2017 zinfandel with dinner 😋) and I'm not feeling the itch to buy more until I polish off a few more.

Beer: Reasonably in Check

When I did a check-in like this two years ago my beer stash was sprawling out across the kitchen counter. It wasn't a good look for someone who wants to have his drinking shopping problem under control. This past year I kept a reasonable lid on the total number of beers in my stash, even as I bought a lot of different beers for my Beer Tasting 2022 project. I kept the size of the collection in check by buying only a few varieties at a time. And I kept them from sprawling across the kitchen counter by storing them in the finished crawl space downstairs. 😅

Hard Liquor: A Little Overgrown

Hard liquor is the one part of my booze collection that has gotten away from me over the past year. My standard for hard liquor is that it's got to fit in the two shelves of cabinet space reserved for it, with an allowance for really tall bottles that I have to put on the counter below because they don't fit above. I mostly stuck to that plan during 2022, but then right at the end of the year I bought a few more bottles than I really should have. Now I have several on the counter.

How will I trim the hard liquor down to size? Well, first, I'll drink it! And I won't let myself go shopping for more until I drink a bunch first. 🥃🍸🍹

Second, I should just throw some out. ...Wait, what?! 🤯

I have at least 3 bottles of liquor I simply don't enjoy. Some of them were gifts that aren't my thing, some are things I decided to try and discovered I don't like. Most of them are cheap liquor so it doesn't hurt to throw them out— or at least it shouldn't. The problem there is I wrestle with the habit of frugality ingrained in me when I was young. I struggle with throwing stuff out, thinking, "Well, maaaybe I could enjoy it, sometime." At some point, though, I'm just going to say "Fuck it!" and pour it down the drain. ...And yes, I have done that before! See "Why is All the Rum Gone?"

2021 started nine days ago. While the new year means little more to me than the turning of a virtual calendar page, I use that turning as a calendar reminder to recheck and reassess all variety of things. This weekend: my drinking problem.

Recall that years ago I diagnosed myself with a drinking problem— though not the one you may think. The problem is I don't drink enough! While I definitely enjoy drinking booze I've learned that I enjoy buying it even more. If I don't carefully control my purchases my stashes of wine, beer, and liquor are prone to grow overfull; to the point that bottles and cans end up lined up on counters, and some older drinks spoil unconsumed.

"Really what you have is a shopping problem, not a drinking problem," one of my friends assured me a few years ago. Indeed, it's been by buying less more than drinking more that I've brought the two into balance. Though as anyone with a problem can tell you, maintaining balance takes constant effort.

Wine: 75 Bottles ± 5

I've gotten pretty good at balancing my wine buying with my wine drinking. I decided several years ago on 75 bottles as my target collection size. That number's based on consideration of how many varieties I like and want to have on hand, how deep a backlog of each variety I need for aging, how fast I tend to drink wine, and of course, how much space I deem reasonable to devote to storing it. Think of it like an oil dipstick where 70 bottles is the "fill" line and 80 is "full".

In 2020 I stayed mostly within that 70-80 range, as I did in 2019 as well. A few times I've dipped down into the 60s but I don't think I've gone above 80 for at least two years. That's an improvement from 2016-2017 when I was closer to 90 a lot of the time, and of course years before that when I topped out over 120. Step One was merely to acknowledge the problem; it took years after that to whittle down my collection.

The oil stick analogy works. Just yesterday I was shopping at a different Costco store than I usually visit. They have a wine department with more international choices than most others stores do. As I identified several bottles I'd consider buying I checked the app I track my wine collection on. I was down to 69 bottles. Yes, 🎵 69 bottles of wine on the wall, 69 bottles of wine! 🎵 I was comfortable buying 5 more bottles. Update: I missed one in my app. I only had 68. Well, now I have 73 so either way I'm good.

Beer: Pileup on the Counter

My drinking/shopping problem is a bit like a balloon. When I press in on one side, likely it expands on the other side. That's what's happened with beer in the past few months. I bought a few cases of Oktoberfest beers back in September because I wanted to try them. Then, on a roadtrip in October we visited a few breweries and I bought 44 bottles and cans:



Nearly three months later most of those are still sitting atop my kitchen counter. 😧 Oh, they're not taking up quite as much space; I stacked them neatly after spreading them out to make this picture. 😊 But the fact is 38 of these 44 bottles/cans from October remain. At least I've nearly cleared out my September purchases. And yesterday I successfully resisted buying more beer when I saw a tempting variety in stock at Costco.

Hard Liquor: Mostly in the Closet

Sometimes I look at my hard liquor collection and I'm like, "WTF?" For example, right now I have 13 bottles of tequila. I haven't had more than 1 or 2 tequila drinks in the past six months, why do I have so much? Oh, wait, that's why. 😅

For hard liquor I don't have a target number as I do with wine. My liquor standard is a matter of, "Does it fit in my liquor cabinet?" (We reserve a two-shelf cabinet in our kitchen for it.) Over the past year the answer has remained: Mostly Yes. It's "mostly" because there are two bottles I keep on the counter because they're too tall for the cabinet. But there's space in the cabinet now they'd fit in if they were shorter. That's a moral victory if not a technical one.

Part of the way I've kept my hard liquor habit in balance is by the discipline of "Buy one bottle after finishing another." The two don't have to be the same, though. Those 13 bottles of tequila accumulated while I explored vodka more this past year— including a drink I invented myself, the Quarantini, as well as sipping vodka straight over ice while imagining visiting Lake Tahoe— and made a point of finishing off some older bottles of rum that were already ½ gone or more. Perhaps in 2021 I'll do that to some of my 10 or so bottles of whiskey, some of which have been in the closet for 10 years at this point. And I'll replace them with... I dunno... more rum, maybe? Since I'm down to 5 bottles of that after having a dozen not too long ago.