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The Truth About Wine Cellars First, the philosophy... Nary a week goes by that someone doesn't come by the store to ask about purchasing a large format wine storage unit or building a wine cellar. Being a wine merchant, I know that I should do everything I can to encourage wine cellars, since so many of my customers spend money in our store in an effort to fill them. I have maintained a personal cellar for over 15 years and can personally attest to the pleasure to be derived from opening that bottle of 12 year old Cabernet that has aged to mellow perfection. The warmth you feel as it spreads its velvety richness across your palate is only rivaled by the sense of victory you have earned by your patience. Well, there is also a dark side to wine cellars, like the engraved anniversary magnum of a 1990 Zinfandel that we opened on July 4th. It was rich and filled with fruit in its youth but had withered into dull senility over 13 years. The fact is, far more wine is ruined in the finest wine cellars than is ever preserved. I cannot tell you the number of times I have watched the owners of magnificent wine cellars discard the rust colored liquid contained in what was once a prized bottle. The truth is that no one can consume 3,000, 5,000, or in some extreme cases, 10,000 bottles of wine before a good portion of it goes bad. Not only am I certain that a high proportion of the cult wine and first growth Bordeaux's are collectables that will never be consumed, even many fine Cabernets and Pinot Noirs are routinely held well beyond their prime.... It took me a long time to understand that wine is like a living thing. It is born, enjoys an exuberant youth, gradually reaches the peak of its maturity and then slowly fades away to vinegar. Think of it as a bell curve... a fine bottle of Napa Cabernet might have a twenty year life and reach its own level of perfection at the eight year mark before slowly fading away to an amber colored death in its 20th year. This is true for all wines, with a vintage Port lasting 50 years or more while an Italian Pinot Grigio might barely hold on for two. The primary reason for maintaining a cellar should be to provide yourself with a well chosen selection of wines that ensure that you always have the right wine for the right occasion. A wine cellar gives you luxury of constantly selecting wines that you can allow to mature for future consumption. The secret is to keep your selections in balance. You need to think about your own consumption profile. What is the of ratio reds to whites, how about between varietals and regions? Think about logging the wines you consume over a few months and use those proportions to dictate the kind of balance you want to achieve in your cellar. And, this should be done while taking into account the potential maturity of the wines. While you would never want to hold Sauvignon Blanc more than a year, you will need to be thinking 5 to 10 years down the road as you select ageworthy Cabernet Sauvignon. So, before you embark on building a personal wine collection here are a few thoughts. Is it the thrill of the hunt? If finding the truly great bottles is your goal, save room, because there is a "vintage of the century" going on somewhere almost every year! Don't cellar more than you can drink unless you intend to sell it off before it's too late. Don't forget when to drink them. Always label your bottles with a tag that reminds you when you intend to serve them. (shameless plug - the cellar cards available here at Grapevine Cottage do this pretty well) Sample your wines over time. Don't wait 10 years to try the first bottle in a case. The top of the bell curve is very elusive. If I have case of good Cabernet I might wait a year and start trying a bottle a year until I think it has peaked, then consume the rest over the following 12 to 18 months. Remember, modern wine making styles lean toward shorter and shorter maturities. Take into account the timelines provided in magazine reviews and pay close attention to the level of tannins in reds and acids in whites. Generally, longevity in white wine is all about acid just as ageworthy reds are based upon their tannic structure. Then, the nuts and bolts of wine storage... How you choose to store your wine should be dictated by how quickly you want it to mature. Here are the factors involved in order of importance. Temperature A red wine stored at 70 degrees will probably age twice as fast as one stored at 58 degrees and white wines are even more affected, often maturing three times as fast. While a 55 to 58 degree cellar temperature is optimum, a 60 to 65 degree quiet corner will do fine for short term storage (2 - 3 years). Remember, the warmer the storage, the quicker the wine will mature and then deteriorate. Consistency in temperature is most essential, and any changes in temperature should occur very slowly. White wines are much more fragile than reds and are much more sensitive to heat. Humidity Moderate humidity is important to keep corks in good resilient condition. A relative humidity of 50% to 75% is ideal. Humidity higher than 75% percent will cause the labels to become moldy and deteriorate.. Humidity below 50% can potentially dry out the corks and shorten the life of the wine. Darkness Light, especially ultraviolet can prematurely age wines. Sparkling wines are especially light sensitive and can be adversely altered by light exposure. Your wine storage should ideally be dark whenever you are not using it. Vibration Consistent vibrations from machinery or nearby roads can disrupt the aging process and damage your wines, especially reds. Racking Your wine should always be stored horizontally so the wine stays in contact with the cork. Bottles should be stored with the labels facing up so that sediment deposits can be seen while decanting. Last week we asked our readers for any local wine cellar resources or recommendations they might have and here is what we got... Three recomendations for Wine Cellars Ltd. From one of our own Ron Bell, another of the of the Wine Guys here at Grapevine Cottage, had his cellar built by Wine Cellars Ltd. in Fishers and seems pretty satisfied. From Kathleen K.. "I had a great wine cellar experience. We built a new home 2 years ago and decided to install a small wine cellar in the basement. Wine Cellars Ltd. of Fishers did all the design and installation. My cellar holds 410 bottles and is basically a closet with individual racks across the back wall and a little room for storage on the side enclosed with a glass door including a cooling unit. I saw another cellar that they built that was 4,000 bottles and it was fantastic. They seem to have references across the country. A great organization to deal with." And this from collector Sheldon O. I had a 1650 bottle capacity wine cellar built in March 2001 byWine Cellars Limited. I was very pleased with the result. The racking was custom made redwood and a Whisperkool 4200 was installed. Wine Cellars Ltd. 9900 Westpoint Drive, Indianapolis (317) 849-4240 And this from Al W., owner of what has to be one of the nicest cellar in Indianapolis Jeff Barnes (823-0450) built our cellar (which you and Linda have seen). We are quite happy with it and his subsequent support. I also heard from Dean Wilson, owner of Deano's Vino in Fountain Square (another good place to buy wine) and it seems that he is also in the wine cellar building business. You can check out some of his work at www.cellarservicesindy.com Deano's Vino & Cellar Services Indy in Fountain Square (317) 972-VINO And, I have used Wine Cellar Innovations in Cincinnati for a lot of the modular racking we have here at the store... Wine Cellar Innovations - Wine Cellars / Racks http://www.winecellarinnovations.com/ Cincinnati, OH 45226 800-229-9813 And finally, here are some links to some of the larger wine storage equipment dealers around the country... The Wine Enthusiast The largest online and catalogue wine storage source International Wine Accessories August 13, 2003 Feedback This dropped in from Manhattan-based wine, food and travel writer Bill Marsanto, just before the blackout.... Dear Wineguy: Print this if you dare! In your screed on wine cellars you talk more sense and less nonsense than anyone I've ever heard save myself, and I just mumble aloud to no one in particular these days. Wine is for drinking, not shelving. Keeping bottles around a couple of years is OK--that's storage. But after that you're talking aging, which is usually a bum idea. Once I said to Jancis Robinson that I figured roughly 95 percent of wine is for drinking now, maybe 4 percent benefits from short aging and one percent is for long-term aging. Her response? Well, if I wrote as badly as they do at the New York Times, I'd say she "nodded a vociferous yes." I have had many folks show me the fabulous electronically controlled storage units; often they were so large they had to be delivered on trucks or flat cars and assembled in situ by teams of crack millwrights. Invariably they struck me as expressions of ego rather than love for wine. Cheers, Bill Marsano Feedback to the Feedback! Last week's rant about wine aging from food and travel writer Bill Marsanto brought a bit of a storm of reader comments.... This from Lebanon reader, John S In response to the feedback from Bill Marsano I would have to disagree. I would say a large majority of wines (especially Cab's or Meritage reds) would benefit from 5 to 10 years of aging. Yes you can drink many $50+ bottles of red now, but they are significantly better after sitting 8 to 20 years. My example is some of the best bottles of wine I have ever had are 10+ years old. The loves are the Beringer Private Reserves (1985, 87, 90, 91, and 1992), Carmenet Vin de Gard 1991, Chateau St Jean Reserve 1991, Cardinale 1990 and 1991. These wines were big and bold and would have been drinkable to some in 1996 to 2000, but now they are wonderful. Aging wine is NOT ego. It is getting the best and most out of a big investment. When you pay $50+ for a bottle of wine that comes to $10+ per 5 oz pour, you should want to get the most out of the experience. Christopher Harken, Dine Magazine editor, weighs in on the subject with a west coast perspective... I always enjoy your online offerings, and once again I feel compelled to chime in. Hmmm...to cellar or not to cellar? Although Bill Marsano's numbers (he claims, quite reasonably, that 95% percent of wines don't require aging) seem, by my experience, in the right ballpark, the spirit of his remarks, to mix a few metaphors, is haunting the wrong churchyard. Many, if not most, cellars are expressions of ego--but it's chop-logic to conclude that, because most wines don't merit long-term cellaring, proper storage conditions are largely superfluous. Even young, simple wines--especially young, simple wines, in fact--can be altered or outright damaged by heat. A few 90-degree days can change the personality of a wine, or trigger the development of VA. Perhaps a "cellar" is overkill, but any wine worth drinking is worth drinking in good condition. I keep wines in a storage locker located in West LA--I can't show my wines off, but they're cool--and keeping wines cool in a desert climate (or an Indiana summer) is a significant challenge. A generously air-conditioned house will work, too--but even a week's vacation (with the air turned off for economy's sake) can produce 90-degree heat in many houses. Although a refrigerator can dry out corks, for periods of a few weeks it's a far safer environment than a closet or a kitchen--one of the hottest rooms in the house. Some of the so-called savants--I'm thinking of certain "Idiot" authors--advise lovers of Champagne to avoid the 'fridge, claiming it may render the wine "dumb." This advice seems dumb, or idiotic--take your pick. Champagne is delicate stuff, more susceptible to heat than to any other Wine. Besides, all wines taste "dumb" just out of a refrigerator--they're only 40-degrees--but 10 minutes in a glass will bring them back to life. For wines left too long in a warm environment, there's no such resurrection. I appreciate--and participate in--the need to de-snob the world of wine. I'ts a great service to debunk the notion that all winelovers must build behemoth cellars. But some of these simplifying efforts are misguided. For example, it's been fashionable to pillory cork-examiners as hopeless pedants, or worse, flat-earthers who just don't get it. But there's actually quite a bit of information on offer in a wine cork. The wines age and storage conditions are hinted at by the cork, and one can often spot TCA from the corks pulled in blind-tastings, even before the wines are examined. Wine lovers should never feel that they have to wait to consume a pricey California Cab--or build a capacious cellar before they can begin buying wine. But wine lovers should acknowledge that wine and heat are mutual enemies, and that any wine stored above 85-degrees isn't just "progressing"--it's degenerating. And this from Bob O, customer, friend and owner of many fine aged bottles... Publish this if you dare! Like myself, my wife loves red wine. So we could easily have drunk all of our older bottles over the past 27 years of our marriage ...and we did drink more than 1,000 of the 2,500 that were in my cellar in 1975-1976. And I also sold about 1,100 bottles at an appropriate profit in the 1980s. But I still kept many favorite bottles. After all, some things are just too good not to try to share with others possibly capable of appreciating them. Nobody can satisfactorily "drink the label" on any rare wine, but what satisfaction is there in serving that same wine to someone who has no appreciation of what they are drinking? Ergo: Somehow find friends interested in appreciating fine wines with you. If you somehow find the patience to cellar some bottles until they develop some "obvious bottle age," I think you will also find out why this experience will be well worth your trouble. Might you possibly need some sort of "preview of coming attractions" to encourage you to embark on this sort of wine-aging journey? Earlier this year, I spent about $80 here in Indy for a Burgess Cellar "library selection" cabernet from their 1991 vintage. I have paid more than that for 1997 and 1999 California wines that, if consumed today in their obvious youth, would constitute little more than "child molestation." Enjoy something like a '91 Burgess cab to learn what I am talking about. Then wait for your bottles to get at least that good!!! And from Dean Wilson of Deano's Vino This is my response to Mr. Bill M. about wine storage. Wine Cellars are devised to mature your wines to optimal taste and enjoyment. Correct, not all wines will benefit from cellaring, but those of us who appreciate a great vintage of California Cabernet, understand that after 4-5 years of laying down in a nice cool bed at 58 F, it will evolve into a charmer. All wines don't show well right after release, that's why most winemakers agree that a wine is like a child it has to go through the adolescent stage (Puberty) before rounding out and becoming graceful and balanced. It makes sense because there are actual living molecules bouncing off the Green shaded glass as we speak. So to you Bill, I say drink all the juice up but for me and my friends, we shall put some juice back for you so we can sit down and enjoy a nice decanted bottle along with some cheese and salami and talk wine stuff like me and my buddy Hugh!
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