Do you talk to your beer collection?

Do you feel this way about your beer?

The New York Times has a story today about Park B. Smith, one of the world’s great wine collectors. His cellar covers 8,000 square feet and holds more than 65,000 bottles (half of them magnums). It has a full kitchen, bath and living room.

This question at the top arises from this lovely paragraph:

“I’ve had a crummy week, I just come down here for a few hours and talk to my bottles,” Smith said, giving voice to the desires of frustrated wine lovers everywhere. Linda (his wife) said, “That’s all right, as long as they don’t start talking back to you.”

But of course they should.

Added an hour later: Why it’s great when newspaper reporters can blog. The story Eric Asimov could do about the cellar is limited by the constraints of print, even when print goes online. In his blog he writes about “the journey we had taken together” – lunch, the wines, mostly the conversation.