Another Stupid Storage Question - Room Temperature

So I’m sitting in my law office with 12 full cases of wine - 2 more came in today - and the office fridge is full. My home fridge and offsite lockers are 99% full to capacity as well.

As a daily drinker, I have a lot of little wines of high quality but under $25. I have been debating just putting a lot of these in a house closet, those that I will consume over the next 5 years. We keep our house at 74 degrees.

Intuitively, I am comfortable with this, always assuming wines are a bit more durable than we think - and most of these are Cru Bordeaux and Northern Rhones, heartier wines - but curious if anyone else does this and has been able to notice a negative. I suspect that in short term, say 1-2 years, perhaps there may even be an upside of an accelerated maturation curve.

Thanks all.

Robert

I think 5 years is too long. I’d be comfortable with 1-2 years. I am sure people will post about wines they’ve stored this way that have been fine after longer than that, but I’ve opened a lot of such bottles, and many have been shot that would have been aging quite well at cellar temp. Anything beyond about 2-3 years seems to drastically decrease the odds of a good bottle, in my experience.

74 is too high.

I bet you could get away with it at 68-70, but you would have no money for wine after paying your electric bill.

what temp are most wine shops at? (not including places like hi time that have all their wines in a refrigerated cellar?) I suppose the assumption is that wine will be sold quickly enough that accelerated aging while on the shelf is no problem.

I’ve had dozens of modestly priced wines in recent years that have been stored at room temperature for 10 to 15 years (or more) and been very good. I keep my house at 74 in the summer and 65 in the winter. Reds have definitely handed it better than whites, other than Germans, Austrians, and sweet Loires.

A hard working attorney like you deserves a built-in home cellar for Christmas! [dance-clap.gif]

And you probably have more on the way, lol! I agree with Doug, 1-2 yrs. But I don’t understand the problem since 12 cases won’t even make it a year at your house right?

I’ve kept wines at room temp in my house for three years without any noticeable effect (never done a side-by-side though).

I’ll do a side by side in the next few weeks of 1999 Ogier La Rosines, one of which has been at room temp since release and the other at 55 degrees, and will report back.

OK, I’ll relay this one more time…

Several years ago, I decided to actually do an experiment. I took three bottles each of three wines (a Muscadet, a German Riesling Kabinett, and a red Burgundy), and stored them three different ways:

Set 1: In temp controlled wine cellar (53-55 degrees)
Set 2: In uncontrolled basement that (back then) swung from 54 in the winter up to 75 in the summer
Set 3: In main house that swung from 58 in the winter to nearly 80 at times in the summer (we did not install central air until 2014)

After two years I brought all the bottles out, and held a blind tasting. I knew what bottles were in the tasting, but not the order. My wife labeled the bags. Nobody else knew the wines or the order.

All the wines were in good shape and tasty. Only set 3 showed any notable development, and only with the whites. Sets 1 and 2 were essentially interchangeable.

From that point I quit worrying about storing extra wine in the basement (especially since 2014 it never gets above 70, even in the dead of summer) for several years.

My services are available for drinking them sooner than the 3 - 5 years. I’m semi retired!

Storing wines in regular refrigerator or room temp for few years? I would think refrigerator since you can increase the refrigerator temp to close to 40? And it wouldnt fluctuate in temp compared to a room.

Find the cockiest associate in your law firm. Fire him (a little humility will help his career in the long run), take over his office and use it for extra wine storage.

Or, party at Robert’s house!!!

If at all possible I’d try to improve the condition for storing these wines if you aren’t going to drink them pretty soon (less than one year.)

A friend of mine kept lots of good wine all over his apartment with similar temperatures.as yours. When he opened them, they often had a slightly off taste. Nothing terrible, but not quite right. I always felt it was a shame that they had been ‘tainted’ by the storage. This is far from scientific, though!

I think your only concern is heat spikes. If the house suddenly shoots up to 90 degrees for a coupla-few days then you might have some issues. Other than that I wouldn’t worry about it.

A few weeks ago, a friend invited me over to try a 1997 Opus One and 1998 Leoville Las Cases. These wines were given to her over 15 years ago (she couldn’t remember the exact years) and had been sitting in her home (actually several different homes in the Los Angeles area over the years) and not in any temp-controlled environment (they were in a storage cabinet in her current home). Her homes were all air-conditioned but not always running (multiple weekend or longer trips per year).
The Opus was was pretty advanced but still in good shape. I had never tried this vintage before, though.
The Las Cases was drinking beautifully to my middle-of-the-road (style-wise) palate, though again, I had never tried it before.

So, my vote for your situation would be that up to 5 years is probably Ok.

Robert,

IMHO you have a more pressing problem than holding a few cases at sub-optimal temps. If you have 12 cases sitting in your office and all of your storage is full you probably need to start thinking about where your cellar is headed in the future and probably need top start planning for additional storage since i don’t get the impression that you will be curtailing your purchases.

At what temperature do you drink them?

The answer is in your post Owlman. 99% means at least another 3-4% in space. Once at 103% capacity, simply buy more capacity.

I agree with Don. You have at least 2 fridges and at least two offsite lockers, and you have 12 cases and growing of ‘daily drinkers’ that don’t fit but you expect to store up to 5 years before consuming. Your purchasing doesn’t seem in balance with your consumption patterns. I would fix that first.