Some wine lovers consider the contents of their cellar as a collection, rather like a library of rare books or an album of postage stamps. Any collection should have a theme, and wine collectors have amassed some remarkable hoards of wines from certain chateaux or districts, and even of large-format bottles from particular properties. These collections provide the raw material for very special tastings, at which fellow wine lovers can compare the qualities of the various vintages of a given wine, or can contrast the wines of different estates in the same vintages.
A collector will take enormous care over the storage conditions of the cellar, as some or all of the wines will be very old and thus fragile. Labels and cases will also require more care, for the bottle itself is part of the "collectable" and, indeed, will be the only souvenir when the wine has been drunk.
A wine collection, as opposed to a domestic cellar, may well have more large-sized bottles, from magnums upwards. These will not fit into most normal racks, and storage space will have to be especially designed and built for them. Large-format bottles often have their own wooden cases.
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