Short term wine storage question

Posting this question to get some advice from all the ITB, winemakers and overall knowledgeable people on this board.

I am in the process of building a new house and won’t be completed until October time frame. I am going to put my current house on the market prior to the Spring.
Currently I have about 55 cases in my temp controlled wine cellar and will need to find some storage solution if the current house sales quickly.
There are no 55 degree storage facilities in Albuquerque (or nearby) so the question is this: would storing the wine at about 70-75 degrees (temp controlled storage space) for up to 6 months be harmful? The other option I have is to transport all the wine to Denver and store there for the short term.

Thanks in advance your thoughts and look forward to hearing from those is you in the business and the winemakers!

It won’t be harmful or noticeable in the slightest.

But fear is the greatest sales device (if you have kids, you’ll especially know this), and there are voices out there telling your wine will be ruined if it’s not in the dark on its side at 55 degrees every moment of its life, so you have to make up your own mind.

There are no commercial wine storage facilities in NM? I would ask some NM retailers if they know of any facilities where you could store 55 cases for 6 months. Since you’re talking about storing over the summer, it would be best to find a dedicated wine storage place for both temp. and humidity if possible.

Bruce

This place says they have wine storage…might be worth a call -

We have “temperature controlled” storage here in Santa Fe but it never gets below 70º so not good wine storage. To my knowledge, there is no dedicated wine storage in all of New Mexico even though Santa Fe has a large wine market. Even considered building one but the insurance cost is too high.

Thanks Michael for the link. I do have a call into them asking wha they have for wine storage but when iw as looking last month, nobody had ideal storage temps.

One possibility is to check with any wine merchants you have strong purchasing relationships with in the area. If they have some additional space, maybe you can make a deal with them.

I don’t know anything about the New Mexico housing market, but in the housing markets with which I’m familiar, an overwhelming majority of all houses sell between about March 1 and June 1, because so many fiscal years and education school years start on July 1 - even June 1 is getting super late for people whose new assignments start on July 1st.

Right now [January 25th], I’d be working furiously to wash the house, repaint it, re-carpet it, possibly get new countertops in the kitchen [and the stainless kitchen appliances had better be spotless], getting all the i’s dotted and the t’s crossed on my legalistics with the real estate agents and the lawyers, etc etc etc.

If you haven’t started already, then it’s almost too late to be ready by Feb 28th/29th - some of this stuff has such a long lead time that you need to start working on it circa the November timeframe.

And once prime time real estate traffic hits its sweet spot, showing the house is a FULL TIME JOB. Everything else in your life has to become subservient to sealing the deal with somebody or other.

But, again, I don’t know anything about the New Mexico housing market.

Real Estate agents seem to be divided as to whether the house moves more quickly furnished or unfurnished:

Again, that probably varies from market to market, and from market-segment to market-segment.

But has anyone ever tried the “fully furnished” route for selling their house, only to come to suspect that somebody on the real estate merry-go-round is pilfering bottles of wine from your fully furnished wine cellar?

Thanks for the all the info Nathan
I have been in the process of getting the house prepared for going on the market for the last month few weeks. Have had the real estate agent point out things that they wanted to see done.
I will still live int he house and thus it will be furnished but i did declutter and par down a lot if things.
As for the current cellar and people looking into it, the door has a deadbolt on it

If you’re dealing with a clientele like we see around here, then you better have a hide thicker than a rhinoceros.

If they see a little dust bunny on the floor, then they’ll start whining and bitching and moaning about it.

And if they see some cobwebs up in the corner of a room, then they’ll run out of the house screaming, “Oh my God, it’s haunted!”

And they’d rather commit Hari-Kari than go down to Lowes, and get some spackling compound and a putty knife and some paint and some paintbrushes, and DIY a fixer-upper job themselves.

So good luck, hold your head high, grit your teeth, slap a great big fake smile on your face, and suffer fools gladly.

We moved in 2014 and had to keep our wine in a rental house for three months in the middle of the summer and the HVAC system sucked. The wine was fine. It is hardier than we usually give it credit.

But has anyone ever tried the “fully furnished” route for selling their house, only to come to suspect that somebody on the real estate merry-go-round is pilfering bottles of wine from your fully furnished wine cellar?

As far as real estate goes - it depends on the market. I packed up all my stuff and did an open house for a weekend. RE agents called repeatedly. Every time I realized it was an agent, I just hung up. No politeness, explanation, no conversation at all. The listing said no agents and if they were rude enough to ignore that direction, I was willing to reciprocate.

Sold the house in a weekend, for more than any house in the neighborhood had ever sold for.

Anyone who had an issue with dust bunnies, etc., was told that I had five other offers, which was true. They could always buy a broom.

It wasn’t the first time I’d sold my house and likely will not be the last. Staging and all that stuff is BS to my mind, especially as I’ve been looking to buy recently. I don’t look at a house that’s “artfully” staged and think about how much I love it - I generally think about how the staging sucks.

Nobody buys because they’re impressed by the furniture. People usually buy because of the schools, the taxes, the neighborhood, the views - i.e. things other than the physical property itself.

That isn’t true if the house is physically striking for some reason, e.g. if it’s unique, beautiful, or decrepit.

In the latter cases, you’ll attract buyers who are looking for those specific things - something they need do nothing to or something they can fix up. But in most cases, that’s not the situation. The people who bought my house tore out the wine cellar to put in a nanny room. They wanted the area. They got a few hundred thousand dollars worth of custom wood work that didn’t make any difference in the price.

My attitude towards RE agents is very much like my attitude towards most wine shop help. I’d prefer to be ignored.

For storage, 70F for a few months isn’t bad but if it’s going to be a few years, you might look for self-storage that has some kind of cooling somewhere. If it’s indoor storage, it likely won’t get into the 90s or even the mid-high 70s. Those outside garages are something else again. It’s unlikely that any retailer would store it for you - that would create a host of unwanted legal issues.

so back to the original topic. Even if you can find a place that controls to no higher than 70, you should be good.

I would be iffy at 75, because even a slight temp hiccup could send it over 80.

Depending on what you wanted to spend you could rent an apartment for my ex wife and ask her to stay there with the wine. No chance in hell anything gets over 55 degrees if she’s there.

Hilarious. Well played sir.

Finally heard back from this company, Global Storage.
They do NOT have proper wine storage in any of their facilities, only indoor storage. They did not understand what wine storage really is considered!

This.

I beg to differ. I rented a mini-storage room with people you know here in NYC and it was in the very high 70s from Memorial Day to Labor Day every year for years. I had to give up on it for long-term storage.

I’ve heard the same thing about other climate controlled storage facilities. I wouldn’t want to put my wine in one for a summer.

If there’s really no other option, could you keep it in a small room somewhere with A/C blasting so it stays fairly cool in there?