Six years ago when we moved into the farm, we had some grand ideas for our wine cellar. We have a perfect space, virtually hidden within the barn, that is more or less a stone cave which keeps a relatively constant temperature and humidity level. And it’s more than large enough to have a seating area and hundreds of bottles of wine. But it was never high on our list of things to renovate and complete. So for the most part, it’s stored some random things left from the previous owner (that we never got around to trashing) and supplies for our own wine making adventures, plus our collection of wines and champagnes assembled over the last few years. It’s nothing extensive or out of this world – but we have plenty of wine in there to host smaller dinner parties for the next year…and probably still have a few bottles left over.
In our adventures of streamlining our possessions and clearing out the farm, it was essential to get a head start on this room to be get a better idea of just what we’re taking with us. Plus it just seemed like an easy place to tackle because there wasn’t so much junk in there – or so we thought.
As you can see, there are tons of boxes, some random pots for plants and even a few painting and building supplies that you probably don’t notice (sorry for the blurry shots but I’m sure I was distracted by the white mummified spiders hanging from the ceilings.) The first step was to start combining things in boxes (especially cleaning out the ones that were falling apart) and figuring out what is just pure trash.
We’re keeping the most essential items from our wine supplies and the barrels and casks that we may actually use if we find a fruit source in Berlin. A few items are going with us just because they are going to look fantastic as decorations in our new place, like a HUGE wine balloon which is housed in a wire basket. Words cannot describe how much I love it.
And the rest – well a lot of it has already been trashed. In fact, one of the first things we did was bottle our homemade red wine from our grapes grown on the barn. Twenty-eight bottles worth to be exact. And then we had to get rid of the rest of the empty wine bottles we’d been collecting for the last year or three. There seriously must have been at least 200 bottles. Thank goodness my Defender holds a ton of stuff, because we managed to get all of them to the dump in one trip. When I first started pulling them out, I thought we might actually need a truck bigger than mine to do the job.
The extra wine stuff will be sold off and given away over the coming weeks. We will also have guests here for the next 1.5 weeks – so we plan to get rid of a bunch of the wine and any beer we have around…and whatever is still left, we’ll just have to move with us. Now that we know the apartment we’re moving to, we can really think things through better and make some plans. And since a cellar is a pretty standard thing with apartments, we’ll just store most of it down there until we need it.
Thankfully, with sites like cellartracker.com, you can also keep up with your wine inventory without having to go look at the bottles. So that will be something we need update before we move so we’ll know exactly what we have downstairs to wet our pallets with. I think we’ll probably still end up with about 100 bottles to move, which is nothing to sneeze at. And will definitely help us win some new friends in Berlin! 😉
What we need to drink and pack
That is a lot of wine! Interesting that cellars come ith apartments. I would not have expected that.
You are making terrific progress clearing out and being SUPER intentional about hat you are taking with you.
I only have a wine closet thanks to limited space, but if I suddenly became wealthy, with a lottery win or some other equally unlikely stroke of good fortune, I would have an immense cellar stocked with the best the Grand Crux Vineyards of France have to offer. There would be no more vin ordinaire for this old man! If I had wine with a hamburger it would be a bottle of Chateau Cheval Blanc. 🙂
That is a great wine cellar. Would do good for storing all sorts of vegetables too. Did I miss a post? Your apartment hunting went well I take it. What neighborhood did you go with? Probably not something you want to post, but I enjoy keeping up with your adventures.
It’s definitely good as a root cellar and for food storage. We’ve had a bunch of home canned goods down there — you just have to watch out for the moisture levels since stuff can get moldy pretty quickly.
We ended up with a place we love in Schöneberg. I’m going to be posting more about it in the next few days — was just waiting to get a confirmation from the landlord before getting our hopes up too much 🙂
Mmm, that’s a lot of bottles! How lovely to have a cellar for your wine at the new apartment. You must be so excited about the move to Berlin (everything is happening there right now).
Well the cellar will likely have a lot more than just wine in it since it will be our primary storage area.
We’re very excited about moving to Berlin. The area pf Schöneberg that we’re moving to has lots of restaurants, cafes and other places to hang out, is very close to the Tiergarten and the Zoo and the apartment itself is just fantastic. So we can’t wait to get over there and really start exploring!
At first, I thought I should offer you some help with the drinking before the move:-)
Then I realized how much there was/is to it!
Btw, I still stick to my program of getting rid off one item every day. Whether it is a small schnapps glass for the donation table at school or a postcard I send off. Tiny steps, but I feel like I am getting ahead, nevertheless.
With 70 years of sipping practice behind me I would gladly donate my cellar clearing expertise if I were in Germany right now. A few wursts and a chunk or two of cheese would make a nice accompaniment and help me in my efforts.
I hope the move goes smoothly Tiffany. Moves can be traumatic experiences or they can be great adventures!
Well we killed about 2 cases of wine already this weekend. Still quite a bit to go, but we’re planning to have some neighbors over and other friends — so I’m sure we’ll be able to lighten our load a bit more before moving day.
And that is awesome about your decluttering. I’m also finding that the more I let go, the more I actually want to get rid of along the way. 🙂
100 bottles truly is “nothing to sneeze at”. I wouldn’t know the first thing about finding a good fruit source in Berlin or anywhere else!
Oh I’m sure we’ll figure something out. Exploring the area will be first on our list of things to do anyway. If we get around to making a new wine, so be it. But I’m pretty sure we can talk to some of the local farmers that come to our market since there are several larger farms outside Berlin.