wine storage question (maybe wrong forum)

Not sure where to post this, but a business contact of mine is a heating, refrigeration and air conditioning contractor. A customer of his has a temperature controlled in home wine cellar. The refrigeration unit in the cellar broke about three months ago. The cellar, without the refrigeration unit was kept at 68° F for three months. My contact fixed the cellar three days ago. My contact set the cellar temperature at 50° F right away so the cellar temperature dropped about 18°F fairly quickly, probably in less than 12 hours. The homeowner says the temperature should have been gradually reduced over a number of days 2° F at a time. The homeowner says the contractor ruined $60k worth of wine by reducing the temperature so quickly. I told the contractor to put his insurance company on notice and that I am not qualified to give an opinion about any damage to the wine. But my hunch is that the wine would not be affected by a relatively quick 18° temperature swing.

Can somebody weigh in on this?

Justin–IMHO, any “damage” to the wine was caused by storing it for three months at 68 degrees. I’m not aware of any evidence that a 12 hour temperature reduction from 68 to 50 degrees harms the wine.

I would also imagine the contractor needs to look at the contract and related documents to see if the owner specified in any way what rate of temperature drop would be acceptable. My guess is that nothing was specified, the owner didn’t think about it, and may now be trying to hold the contractor responsible for any damage that might have occurred at higher temperatures.

Bruce

That happens each and every time you buy a bottle and transfer it home. Then take that bottle from your warm car and directly insert it into its new wine cubby hole in the cellar set at 54 degrees.

Each and every bottle. Each time. Unless your wine is directly shipped via a cooler panel truck to your doorstep and handed off for direct insertion into the cellar.

IMHO.

Not a problem !

The owner is failing to also recognize that the air temp will drop quickly, while the in bottle temp will take a bit longer.

The customer needs to calm down and check with a couple of good wine retailers and/or winemakers/enologists… IF he is really wanting to be fair to the contractor. Most wine retail shops are hard-pressed to keep their inventory at 68 unless they have closed refrigerated storage for it. And I agree completely with the notion that most all bottles go through that 12 hour (or less!) temp drop when they are moved into most anyone’s wine fridge.

Sorry, but pure [bullshit.gif] in humble opinion.
We froze a fair number of bottles courtesy of the Napa earthquake. Most of those that didn’t blow corks have been drinkable after five days at 58 degrees. The oldest vintages not so good, but they may have been over the hill anyway. The high alcohol Australian wines didn’t blow corks and I think they better than I remember.

This probably should just be in Wine Talk.

The ideal thing would have been to lower the temp slowly over a few days, but the wine is not ruined and there is no way it would hold up in court, esp. given that the homeowner didn’t get it fixed for 3 months.

BTW didn’t it go from 50 to 68 fairly rapidly when the AC broke?

What the customer says is total BS. What matters will be what’s in the contract, as was mentioned, but I am sure that they can’t come up with any proof of such a temperature change hurting the wine. I think 3 months at 68 degrees would be the problem if there were one, but I don’t think that hurt the wine either if it really didn’t get much above that.

Homeowner is flat out wrong.

On top of being wrong, was the owner not there? If I hire someone to fix my cooling system, that is what I expect them to do. I don’t expect them to manage the rise in the thermostat over a number of days - this guy has to be an idiot - the contractor should say in his best John McEnroe imitation, “are you kidding me!?!?!”

Get it working and turn it on - then it is the owner’s responsibility to reset the thermostat in the way that he wants it set.

Also, as a side note, if the owner is so anal, then why didn’t he get it fixed in a shorter time than 3 months - that hurt the wine far more than the drop in temp. Or, if there was some reason for the delay, why didn’t he do something to reduce the temp in the interim, like using dry ice or a portable air unit. Once when my chiller fan went out and the replacement part didn’t come for a handful of days, I went through hundreds of pounds of dry ice (with a new delivery each morning) and kept my cellar in the 50s. Sure, it cost a few hundred dollars but I thought it was well worth the piece of mind.

This.

Just for fun, I would ask the homeowner for some type of documentation that shows any swing in air temperature (not liquid temp mind you) above or below 2 degrees per hour will ruin wine.

yep.

If the homeowner was correct, then all of us would be ruining Champagne every time you took a bottle from a store and put it in an ice bucket to chill it down…

Bruce

Bingo. Or the fridge. As a chemist, I am completely confident there is no possible way to “damage” wine by cooling it from 68 to 50 in a few hours. Sounds more like the homeowner is trying to gin up a claim to get some money from insurance.