Periodically, every wine collector needs to stop buying more wine and take stock of what's already in their cellar. Ideally, you're maintaining an accurate inventory as the benefits of doing so are compelling (See "Reasons to update/create your wine cellar inventory"). If not, you may be faced with the exercise James Laube describes in his article "No bottle left behind" (too new to be online yet) in the September 20, 2007 issue of The Wine Spectator.
Most people discover what Laube did in his friend's cellar -- namely that some wine is way past its prime (i.e. dead) or needs to be consumed immediately. But his three categories for classifying what he found -- "keep, toss, and party" -- is missing an important one which is "sell."
If your rate of consumption is not keeping pace with your rate of buying, regularly selling off wine before it goes bad is one way to avoid stockpiling excess wine (see reason #2 in "Common reasons to sell wine"). You might even find that selling helps finance your buying habit.
