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People are often surprised that I -- a food and wine writer -- don't have a wine cellar. But I don't, and probably for some of the same reasons you don't. I can't be bothered. I'm too busy to put one together. I don't have the space. I don't want to spend thousands of dollars on an oversized, refrigerated, humidity-controlled unit.
Does that mean I run out and buy a bottle of wine every night for dinner, or each time I need a cupful to make a sauce? Heavens, no! I keep a little stash. Call it a cook's wine stash. It's very basic: a little of this, a few bottles of that, all tucked into a simple hardware-store wine rack in the bottom of my pantry. I keep one bottle of sparkling wine and one bottle of white ready to drink in the refrigerator (neither stays longer than a week or two); between that and the 12 in the rack, I'm ready for anything.
It's easy and inexpensive to put together a cook's stash of 13 bottles. Just gather the following: