The growing popularity of wine has encouraged many people to develop their own wine cellars, with the goal of consuming or selling their wine at its peak. Although the goal sounds simple enough, the strategy of what to buy, how long to hold it, and when to open the wine is remarkably complex.

Two Cornell University professors explain the complications as they show how to optimize an individual wine cellar by taking into account six performance criteria and twelve limitations to yield three types of decisions.

The report "Optimizing a Personal Wine Cellar," published by the Center for Hospitality Research in conjunction with the Vance A. Christian Beverage Management Center, both at the Cornell School of Hotel Administration, is available at no charge on the center's website at http://www.hotelschool.cornell.edu/research/chr/pubs/reports/2008.html. The authors are Gary Thompson, a professor at the School of Hotel Administration, and Stephen Mutkoski, the Banfi Vintners Professor of Wine Education and Management, Beverage Management Center, at the school.

Noting that the wine cellar optimization involves scheduling issues, Thompson constructed an optimization engine that takes into account the performance criteria, limitations, and decisions.

"While it's up to the cellar owner to determine which individual wines to purchase," he said, "the optimizer shows how much wine to buy according to three categories, short-hold wines, which will be consumed in the near future, medium-hold wines, which are perhaps two to five years from consumption, and long-hold wines, which will be held over five years."

Using the wine cellar optimizer, Thompson and Mutkoski tested two different levels of average wine cost ($20 wine and $40 wine) and examined the purchasing patterns needed for numerous cellar sizes and time horizons. "The purchase patterns among the wine categories change considerably with a longer time horizon," noted Thompson. "But at either budget level and at even a modest cellar size, the optimizer test demonstrates that a person can use a wine cellar to bring wine to its optimum quality at consumption."

Meet and interact with Dr. Thompson, an active member of the executive education faculty at the School of Hotel Administration, when he presents sessions in the Professional Development Program: http://www.hotelschool.cornell.edu/industry/executive/pdp/.