Cellaring and Storing Wine

Now comes to bad news, good readers! Wine is a temperamental little beast. When a wine writer, retailer or, lord forbid, the marketing blurb on the bottle tells you to lay the bottle down for ten years plus, they are making a fairly big assumption.

That you have proper storage conditions.

Wine generally does not survive the aging process too well if it is stacked in the garage or at the bottom of your closet. Short term storage can even be a problem in these conditions. One of the major headaches with exporting wine is the short term heat exposure cases can be submitted to whilst on the docks or in unloading warehouses waiting to be loaded into the more climate controlled areas.

So here is a look at what you need to be careful about when it comes to wine storage.

Most experts agree that a good wine cellar will maintain an average temperature of between 12 and 16 degrees C. Within this range, or even a degree or two outside, is really no cause for alarm.

In the case of high temperatures, short-term exposure to extreme heat can result in "cooked" tasting wine. In this case, fruit flavours will taste a little too much on the stewed side.

Variation in temperature results in the glass of the bottle and the closure, (whether it be cork or screw cap,) expanding and contracting at uneven rates. This allows fresh oxygen into the wine, and can result in the wine being oxidised. This is a slight vinegar like taste, or a heavy vinegar like taste if it happens too much! Experts again tend to recommend no more than a 10 degree C annual variation in temperature.

Wine bottles are traditionally laid on their side when stored. There is a really simple reason for this - it keeps the cork moist! Keeping the cork moist means that it will not dry out and lose its elasticity, which is what allows it to keep that dastardly fresh oxygen out of the wine.

A myth persists that sparkling wine should not be stored on its side, but if it has a cork enclosure, then it too needs to keep its cork moist.

Modern screw caps obviously do not have the requirement of keeping a cork moist but if you have half your bottles needing to be on their side and half not, well, racks could get expensive, so go the whole hog!

If the air is too dry, corks will dry out. If the air is too moist, algae will grow around your bottles, eat your labels and cardboard, and be a nuisance. About 80% relative humidity works.

This one is a little bit hearsay - there is no real scientific data on it, but the theory makes sense. When cellaring wine, you are in essence putting it to "sleep". Too much vibration means that the molecules in the wine stay volatile rather than settling down and "tightening". So, the theory goes, avoid vibration.

Also, too much vibration might mean that the bottle falls off your rack and breaks. That's bad too!

With all of the above factors making storing and aging wine such a finicky proposition, there is a real demand for wine storage cabinets amongst consumers. These fridge-like storage vessels essentially are programmed to emulate all of the above factors, and thus keep control of the conditions your wine is stored in. There are obvious benefits in using them, as you can rest assured that your long hot summer will not ruin your entire wine collection.

Probably the main drawback is the number of wine bottles these cabinets can take, with only a couple of hundred bottles in capacity on the larger models. This may sound like a lot, but you don't need to be a serious wine collector to attract a much larger wine cellar than that!

Australia and New Zealand proudly led the world in the screw cap debate. Finally, the rest of the world are picking up on this hot topic. So, here are the only real proven facts in this argument.

Cork is a fallible product, that is susceptible to problems with not maintaining an airtight seal (resulting in oxidised wine) and in cork taint or "corked" wine - a bacteria from some batches of cork that infects wine and resulting in a dull, musty odour and taste in varying degrees. There are some estimates that say that one in four wines are corked in some way. In my estimate, about one in twelve seems to be what I tend to pick up.

Let's face it - in any other industry, that is pretty poor quality control. Yet, since the general wine consumer is made up of many people who simply do not know how to pick a corked wine, there was no real pressure to change. Cork was the boss.

Screw caps were tried on cheaper wines in the Seventies, and failed. With no education programme, consumers thought the wine was simply "cheap". It also did not help that, back then, the screw caps were not really that good at keeping a seal!!

However, modern screw caps are infinitely better at maintaining an air tight seal than cork, and have no such thing as "screw cap taint". So, I hear you say, let's get all wine under screw cap post haste, right?

Well, there are some things that are yet to be proven.

No one has had really good aged wine in a screw cap for long enough to tell how a wine reacts under the closure in time. Lab tests point to things being a-ok, but the Lab can only emulate a "real" aging process so far. To what extent does the slight allotment of oxygen into an aging wine actually create "better" aging? Is it different for different wines? Put simply there are a lot of opinions, but no real fact on this question yet.

Also, despite all the marketing and education, wine is a stuffy, slow moving industry. The ritual of popping a cork is one of the intrinsic elements of this whole thing we call a wine culture.

So, cork aint dead yet.

Personally, I can't get enough screw caps (or Stelvins to many Aussies, which is one of the main brands - sorta like calling a sandwich press a "Breville") Aromatic wines such as Sauvignon Blanc, Riesling and Traminer sing out much louder than they do under cork. And I am willing to experiment a little with my reds under screw cap as well, if it means that there is no more corked wine.

However, be careful of "screw cap evangelists" who will tell you that nothing can ever go wrong with a wine under screw cap. Screw caps can be damaged in transport and lose their seal, and the bottles "threads" can also be damaged.

But, this has not happened a lot to me. By simple examining your bottles before you buy, you really should be able to spot any danger.

Viva la screw cap!