Cave Dwellers

A well-stocked cellar should satisfy every taste and occasion with bottles worthy of the wait

- Max Allen

The best way to explain my approach to stocking a wine cellar is to share a few real-life stories from my recent drinking history. I visited a bunch of wineries in the Great Southern region of Western Australia a couple of months ago and enjoyed many Rieslings from the excellent 2018 vintage, including Frankland Estate’s scintillating, lime-y, precise Isolation Ridge.

I love Australian riesling. I think it’s one of the best wines you can have in your cellar: it matures gracefully for two or three decades and it’s usually very affordable when it first hits the bottle shop shelf. As a result, I have quite a few older rieslings in my (not very big) cellar, including some Grosset Polish Hill and Watervale from my son’s birth year (always buy wines from your children’s birth year: even if they don’t appreciate them when they turn 18 or 21, you will) and a few Frankland Estates.

When I got home from WA, I fossicked around in the rack and dug out a bottle of Isolation Ridge from 2008, to remind myself – and the other 10 people I’d invited for Sunday lunch – how good it tastes after 10 years. And it didn’t disappoint: all the pure citrus freshness of youth had developed into the gorgeous, rich lime-cordial of middle age as the bottle had sat in my cellar.