It has been almost two years and 170 blog posts since starting SAZ in the Cellar!  Thank you for your great support and interest in my opinions on the subject of wine.

I am often asked what does SAZ in the Cellar stand for and what was the meaning behind it?  I think the ‘in the Cellar’ part is pretty obvious and relates to spending time in a wine cellar.  I am a big believer that the best and best-valued wines you will drink are from your own cellar and are aged over time.  I buy wine to put in the cellar; rarely do I buy a bottle of wine for immediate consumption.  Most wine is drunk far too early and does not have the ability to reach its potential.  Therefore, I spend a lot of time in my cellar: putting wine in, selecting wine to go with an upcoming meal and monitoring my wine inventory to make sure I have the right drops aging for the next decade.  My wife calls my cellar my ‘man cave!’  Hence I thought it appropriate to think about wine from the perspective of the cellar.  My upcoming book Wine Sense present a lot of information regarding how to calculate the size of your cellar, what to put in it and how to store wine in your cellar to make sure you get the most out of it.

SAZ in the Cellar

So why ‘SAZ?’  My wife had inspired me by writing her cooking and food blog DAZ in the Kitchen.  Since she was in the Kitchen and I was in the Cellar, I thought I would play off her DAZ theme and become SAZ.  I assumed DAZ meant ‘Deanna from A – Z,’ and I liked the idea of SAZ for Steve from A – Z.  Therefore I became SAZ in the Cellar and proud of my moniker!

Much later I found out that it was a common Australian country town convention to provide a nickname which used your first initial and added ‘azza’ to it.  My wife was looking for a nickname for her blog, but did not like Dazza, so shortened it to DAZ which she thought sounded better.  I still like the idea of the AZ representing the body of knowledge from A – Z, but am really glad my wife decided to ignore convention and go with DAZ instead of Dazza.  Otherwise, today I might have been Sazza in the Cellar instead of SAZ in the Cellar!

Steve Shipley, author Wine Sense, out early 2014. Published by InkIT Publishing
© 2013.  Steve Shipley
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