The L.A. Fire Column
What Should a Man Save From His Cellar? And Should He Be Killed For Asking That Question?
As we shoved suitcases into our cars, my lovely wife Cassandra asked, with a laugh, “Should we grab a few good bottles?”
It was a laugh both at our good fortune (our house hadn’t burned yet; we were people who own a wine cellar) and the fact that people who save wine from a burning building might be alcoholics.
We didn’t wind up saving any wine. Or evacuating. I packed the Snoopy hand puppet I’ve had since I was a baby, a bunch of photo albums (it’s not important what they were of)1, and a week’s worth of clothes.
While I was in college, my parents got divorced. When I returned home to New Jersey after graduating, they asked me to sort through my stuff because they were selling the house.
I stared at 21 years of stuffed animals, baseball cards, t-shirts from every concert I’d ever attended, glass animals, and a bottle cap collection whose existence shocked me since I didn’t grow up during the Great Depression. Looking at it all, heartsick from knowing I’d have to get rid of most of it, I thought, “I’m never becoming emotionally attached to objects again.” I vowed to never collect anything. And I’ve stuck to it. I only buy things I can use or consume. Tools and food.
Unfortunately, I found a loophole.
Wine is meant to be consumed, but unlike any other edible product, it has the potential to last forever. Soon, I had a wine refrigerator in our Manhattan studio apartment. Then I moved to L.A. and built a wine cellar.
Now I have a collection again. One I catalog on my Wine Cellar app. One I’ve printed out as a wine list to offer a very select group of dinner guests who I know won’t beat me up after seeing it, mostly because they are older or weaker than I am.
I have wines we were given as wedding gifts. Wines we collected on trips. Wines that, defying my vow, mean something to me.
We were lucky. We weren’t evacuated. We kept our house. And now I think that I should have listened to Cassandra and packed a few bottles. Not to keep but to finally drink. To return them to the purpose I promised they’d be for.
I would have saved the wines we find most delicious: The Chateau Montrose from Bordeaux, the Kracher dessert wines from Austria, the Sea Smoke pinot noirs from California that Cassandra loves.
But that’s not what I would do. I’d grab the case of 2009 Château Cantenac Browns I bought as futures when I knew that was the year our son would be born. I’d take the 2002 Kracher dessert wines that were made the year we got married. I’d lug the magnum of 1997 Moon Mountain Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon, from the year I met Cassandra and from the long-gone winery we visited when I took her on her first trip to California.
And while I’d like to say I’d drink them out of Solo cups over cheeseburgers in the parking lot of an In-N-Out while watching my city burn, I wouldn’t. I would keep them. I’d move them into my next house the first addition to my new collection. Because, as stupid as I know it is, it’s too hard to stop holding on.
For the comments section: Do you own wines you would save? Which ones?
All the articles I’ve ever written.
I can tell you what I did during the Woolsey Fire in 2018. I left my wine behind and lost it all. It was the right decision for me at the time. The most significant losses were cases of well aged Mayacamas Cabernet. Lots of Ridge ATP program offerings as well. The biggest loss for me was certain pieces of modernist furniture, vintage books and artwork. Regrettably, I left behind "Danny Dog", my stuffed dog that had been with me since my first year.
I was very utilitarian in what I chose to bring. I didn't have a lot of time and I didn't have a lot of room in my car. Major documents, some photos (but not all, alas), a few books, about a week's worth of clothes, and my tennis gear for some reason. It was also a Stanford football weekend, so I had that trip to make after I went to work that morning. That turned out to be a solid evacuation plan. I subsequently found out my house had burned while drinking wine while tailgating in the Chuck Taylor Grove. I drank more.
This event occurred about 6 weeks before my getting remarried. I did remember to bring my wedding suit and accessories. Kim and I ended up moving in together before the wedding, which was somewhat convenient. Even her mother grudgingly approved of the arrangements given the circumstances
Today, I would do things a bit different. I would bring a couple of meaningful bottles. We do have a few nice bottles from our wedding dinner. That would suffice.
But I do have another suggestion. My daughter bought an old house in St Paul that came with a well built wine room/closet off their dining room that holds a maybe 150 bottles or so. I made it a point to stock it with some of my favorites. There has been a bit of a storage tax (my daughter loves the Williams Selyem Pinot's, my son-in-law the Turley Zinfandels), and I've had to do some restocking from time to time. But I always have good stuff to drink when I visit.