Midway through our life's journey as wine collectors, we found our wine refrigerator almost lost, its engine straining desperately against the summer heat. Delving into the dark wood of the cabinet to remove all the bottles would provide a chance to catalog and glorify years of strategic acquisitions -- or so we hoped.
Yet what we found made our blood run cold. Too many bottles of the same wine from the same vintage or producer, and too many bottles that could only quite charitably be described as having seen better days.
So that others might avoid the nine levels of vinous hell into which we had stumbled, we sought the advice of more experienced collectors, asking for their guidance straight and true.