Wino Forever

I mentioned a while back that the project I was looking forward to the least is our DIY bar. I was so looking forward to having someone else take care of this, but once we hired our bartender, I found out it was significantly cheaper to provide our own alcohol than to purchase it through him. This also means we have to provide our own mini-fridges and coolers, but we've already planned to borrow some from family members.

The wine we chose for our wedding is not very expensive, but HEB runs specials on it pretty often, so over the past few months, Mr. Hyena and I have been on the lookout for any sales, and then cleared the shelves of whatever was available. Then, recently FSIL Hyena told me they were having a blow-out "Texas Wine Week" sale, and the time had come to round out the rest of the bottles.

We estimated about 48 bottles of wine for the afternoon, and finally have them all. Now, neither of us really has the means to store this much wine, but I made it work.

The rest are over at Mr. H's. Thank goodness I've been packing up my apartment and therefore haven't had people over in a while, because this totally makes me look like I have a problem.

For those of you who are purchasing your own wine before your wedding, I learned something interesting from FMIL Hyena: if you purchase wine bottles ahead of time, the cork needs to stay moist or the wine will eventually ruin itself. Lay your bottles flat or slightly pointing downward (like they would on a wine rack), and rotate them every once in awhile to prevent this from happening.

Are you providing your own alcohol? What other storage tips do you have?