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Hi all,

I am currently 'investing' in a drinks collection for my future (hopefully) flat.

What would you recommend and is there any drinks that would be particuarly good for our PO world we are entering?

To start of, I have a old english gin, a bottle of red wine, prosecco, a dry sherry, jack daniels whisky, somerset ale.

Cheers

LB3

Spirits are the best choice as they keep indefinatly.
If for resale or barter then mid price range well known brands are probably best, gordons gin, plymouth gin, beefeater gin, smirnof vodka, bells whisky, and the like.
If for your own use, then whatever you enjoy normally.

Beer is not so good as it has a limited shelf life, keep as much as you drink in say 12 or 18 months, remembering to use it in rotation.
Moderatly priced wine likewise has a limited shelf life.

Fortified wines such as port and sherry keep well and are worth stocking if you enjoy them, but are arguably less suitable for barter or resale as they are less popular.

Vodka. You can drink it, clean wounds with it, or make herbal tinctures with it.

Personally I'd go for Whisky, because it's more difficult to fake than Vodka. Also, liquers like Cointreau can be enjoyed in very small quantities, making that little bottle of luxury last for longer.

Ballard wrote:

I found a pub near Berwick serving that stuff last year. So It really had travelled about the entire length of England- crazy, but still went down well!

You would think wine would be the stuff to hoard, really - presuming, that is, you know which wines will keep. Some I'm sure are bought as an 'investment' and put away in cellars for donkey's years.

Anyone any experience of drinking vintage, rare, expensive wines? Does it just turn to vinegar or what?

We were once given a bottle of 25 year old wine that had supposedly passed its best. If it was past its best it must have been pretty fantastic stuff at its best. Conversely we kept a bottle of champaign for a special occasion but when the occasion arrived we had to chuck the bottle away as it was really off.

If I were to keep a bottle of something for the future it would be a bottle of Mountgay rum because I like it. And that is the reason to keep a bottle of something special, because you like it. If you want to keep a bottle for any other reason you'll have to decide for yourself what that should be in your particular circumstances.

On Christmas day we drank a bottle of red that I had bought for 3 Euros eight years ago from a French vineyard. It turned out to have been an excellent investment. So, my advice, would be buy a few cases of full bodied French red straight from the cave in the year it is bottled. Pick a small family run vineyard with old vines where they use as few chemicals as they can get away with if not actually certified 'méthode biologique'. A hot summer helps. Don't spend much.

Cheap or inferior wine is apt to spoil in storage and it is therefore unwise to stock more than you will drink in a year or two.
Fine wine will usually improve, but it is not easy for the non expert to know which wines will spoil and which ones will improve, and even the experts sometimes get it wrong.

The buying of fine wines for maturing is a fascinating hobby in itself, and can be profitable, but requires considerable knowledge, a lot of capital, and ample cellar space.
Not primarily a PO prep.

Cheap and inferior don't always correspond. One small vineyard I went to, run by one old man and his wife, just made about a dozen barrels per year. His pricing strategy was interesting. Newly bottled 1 Euro, last year's 2 Euros, previous years 3 Euros and so on. We bought the cheapest and kept it several years. Excellent result.

Ditto all of the comments about investing in spirits. They keep for years, provided you can be disciplined. Plus, if you have a good enough range of them you can make cocktails.

Wine rarely lasts in my household long enough to lay down ...

My spirit recommendation would be a good Armagnac.

The only thing you really need is the bottles the drink comes in. Start brewing your own and make a still otherwise your are tied to a finite resource and we wll know how that ends

ziggy12345 wrote:The only thing you really need is the bottles the drink comes in. Start brewing your own and make a still otherwise your are tied to a finite resource and we wll know how that ends

Yes, but.
This is illegal in the UK and most other places, who cares after the TSHTF, but it does limit practicing and experimenting whilst times are normal.
Sensible though to keep a supply of bottles and corks or other closures, the manufacture of glass bottles involves a fair bit of technology.
Bottles are of course useful for brewed or fermented drinks, the home production of which is lawful, for private use but not for sale.

With care, bottles will last indefinitely, or at least a very long time and glass is one of the easier things to manufacture. you only need a basic kiln and the correct materials such as silica sand and limestone and look the rest up on Google while it's still here. Oh! you'll need a blowing iron as well. Spirits can also be kept in pottery jars as well which only require clay, salt and a kiln.

A spare hot water cylinder, be it copper or stainless steel, is also a useful thing to keep: in case your household cylinder goes wrong of course!!