I know this topic comes up periodically and my take on things likely isn’t novel. I’ve had trouble shaking the notion below for a couple days and wanted to run it past you and see if there’s any real data on the topic (because I have zilch).
I was thinking about why we typically lay bottles on their side to age them (I do, too) and whether there’s any data that supports supine bottles being any better than upright bottles over time.
I know we think we store them on their side to keep the cork wet and therefore prevent it from drying out. Maybe that’s true. A couple thoughts on this about which I’d love this crew’s opinion.
-
As collectors, we store bottles on their sides, ostensibly to keep the cork wet. Could it be that the real reason we store bottles on their side is because that’s the way French chateaux/domaines have always done it in their cellars for hundreds of years and if it’s good enough for them; it’s good enough for us?
-
If mimicking winery cellar storage is the real reason we do it (I think it might be, because they must know best), then why do the wineries do it this way? Is it really to keep the corks wet?
-
Most (maybe all) of the first cellars where bottles of wine were kept to age were natural caves or excavated caves, all of which were made out of rock. Chiseling rock is a hell of a lot harder than carving/cutting wood. Clearly, making a shelf out of a piece of solid stone (or chiseling a shelf into the wall of a cave) is a hell of a lot harder than making them out of wood.
-
If the above is true, storing 1000 (or 5,000 or 15,000) bottles with the fewest number of shelves is optimal (less chisel time).
-
Wine bottles will stack laying on their sides. I don’t know exactly how high (without breakage from the weight of other bottles) but I know it’s at least six high as I’ve had them stacked this high on each other in my offsite locker at various times. Nothing broke. Wine bottles will not stack standing up. I tried this once in college and once was enough. Something broke.
-
Could it be that the reason we lay bottles on their sides is because 1000 years ago it was easier to make one large cutout in a wall of solid rock than it was to make multiple shelves out of that same piece of rock? Could it be that our penchant for laying wine down has more to do with the practicality of bulk storage a millenium ago than it does with assisting or shepherding the aging process?
I think (although I have no data) that I may be onto something. Storing bottles upright seems to me to be to be potentially superior. A few supporting points:
-
If the liquid is up against the cork in a wine bottle, the cork is moist. But wouldn’t a cork be in a 99% relative humidity environment when standing up? It’s a virtual vacuum in there and below about half an inch of air is liquid. Isn’t the cork moist regardless?
-
TCA is still an issue. Some are more sensitive to it than others. When a wine is corked, it’s from TCA on the cork. Wouldn’t having the liquid in direct contact with an infected cork for a longer period of time make the taint worse? Let’s say two corks are lousy with TCA. One cork is used as a closure for a bottle of wine stored on its side (direct contact with liquid). The other is used as a closure for a bottle of wine stored standing up (no direct contact). We age both bottles for twenty years. Upon opening, shouldn’t we expect the former bottle to taste more “corked” than the latter? If not, why not?
-
Cork is a natural product. Just like a piece of paper, a blade of grass or my elbow (also natural products), it “tastes” like something, even if subtly. If the two bottles of wine in #2 above weren’t lousy with TCA, shouldn’t we expect the former wine to have more imparted “cork” taste than the latter? It seems so. Maybe the taste adds to the complexity of the wine and that’s a feature and not a bug. But still, wine A has to taste corkier than wine B, right?
-
The surface area of the liquid exposed to air is larger in a bottle on its side than upright, right? If slow aging is the key, shouldn’t we optimize for the minimum air contact surface area possible, assuming there is at least some part oxygen in the air trapped in the bottle?
OK, I’m done. Does anyone have any data on any of this? Think there’s anything to my theory?
-af
(title updated to better reflect the post)