Cellaring Wines

by The Wine Guy_R, Craig Decker

 

Let me reflect back to one of my prior points…99% of the worlds wine production is meant for immediate consumption.  That having been said, once you begin to collect there are storage conditions that become very important, with the most important factors being light, temperature, humidity and consistency.

 

Storing wine in your living area is a waste of time. The temperature is 68-70 degrees and usually sees big swings from sunlight and heating.  All these factors account for cork failure.  When a cork dries out you will see a red line on the cork for reds, this is an indication that the wine has seeped all the way to the bottle opening.  Once it has reached the opening, air can travel into the bottle.  Oxygen is the enemy of wine.  Once air gets to the wine is just like opening the bottle and its starts to turn.  In most cases the wine will go bad and have a musty, even a rancid taste.  Dump it unless you like this sort of taste.

 

Wine should be stored in darkness, away from movement, have 60-70% humidity and a temperature at or near 55-62 degrees.  Maintain the consistency of this storage environment and you will have the best chance of maintaining the integrity of your wines.

 

However, storing wine is a crapshoot.  You are in most cases trying to play the game of who wins, you or Mother Nature.  You will loose bottles to corking.  Corking is when a bacteria forms in the bottle as a reaction to the cork and makes the wine taste and smell like a damp basement or a wet dog.

 I have had a whole case with poor corks where they were dry and the wine started to go bad all at the same time. No fault of mine just a bad lot of corks.

 

Buy what you like but if your passion is to cellar or collect, invest in your storage system and protect you investment.  You can buy a wine refrigerator now that will hold 100 bottles for just a $150-$300 which is the cost of a moderate case of wine.

 

Having a large wine cellar is cool but expect the inevitable you will get bad bottles and some wines aren’t meant to store or cellar.  Putting a $5.00 monteplulciano in the cellar should be for convenience, not aging.