My answer to the humidity question is: No, you don’t need 80%, or even 70% or 60% humidity. Over 25 years of cellaring wines in an active cellar with humidity averaging about 55% (ranging from 45% in winter to 65% in summer), I have zeen zero evidence of corks drying out. My 1982s have fills to within 1/4" of their corks. Would it make a difference if my plan was to store them 50 years? Maybe, but I doubt it and I’m not losing any sleep over it.
My answer to the temperature question is: it depends on your preferences and how long you want to store the wine. I have had an opportunity to repeatedly blind taste over multiple years through two cases of 1983 Prieure Lichine, purchased simultaneously, one of which had been kept in my temp controlled cellar at a constant 57 degrees and one which had been stored in my father’s passive basement cellar (up to 70, sometimes 72 degrees in summer, down in the high 50s in winter). Not a great wine or a great passive storage system, and it was only one wine, but there was definitely a difference in how the wines showed. The passively stored wine developed faster and went over the hill faster, but only by a few years. Some years the passively stored wine tasted better (usually early on) and some years the actively stored wine tasted better (usually later on). I think the differnce was more due to the higher average tmep in the passive cellar than due to the fluctuation, but have no evidence or theory to back that up. I didn’t see any significant ullage in either group over about 15 years. Since they didn’t peak at the same time, it was difficult if not impossible to say which storage system produced higher peaks.
1983 Prieure Lichine was a very nice wine that drank beautifully from 1992 onwards. Every bottle was consistently good from a case passively stored from 1985 until the last bottle was consumed in 1999. These wines reached the high 60’s in the summer for a few weeks. I also had 1983 Prieure Lichine from restaurant wine lists and I could not see any difference. From the same cellar, the 1983 Beaucastel was a brett beast especially when compared to more pristine cellared examples.
I recently went active cooling because the cellar in my new house consistently goes above 65F in summer, which is several degrees higher than my comfort level for brett bloom but I do not have a scientific reference…I know I have not had any brett issues for years so, I assume my current temp controls are sufficient.
I think one of the reasons we accept 55 as the ‘right’ temp to store at is that there’s no evidence that it harms the wine to store it at that temp and there is evidence that wines stored there still evolve. It’s an accepted safe number and so a lot of the reason we use it is inertia.
Plus,it’s a specific number but doesn’t feel picky - people understand 55 to mean “in the 50s” and few are really hung up on the exact number. If we said 53 or 57, those numbers feel more specific for some reason. It’s like asking someone the time - if they reply ‘7:30’ you don’t really care if it’s 7:33 or 7:28… but if they said “7:29” it feels like an attempt to be much more precise.
Question on light, how much is too much? I have a frosted glass pane in my cellar door which is on the bottom floor in our media room. That room has some light come in but does not shine directly on the cellar door. Would that small amount of light be harmful?
Good question. I have a tinted glass door on the Vinoteque and am concerned about the effects of sunlight which at certain times of the year can be directly shinning on the bottom half of the door for an hour or two. I do know sunlight is conducive to increase bacterial action to some degree.
It would be good if some of this board`s experts in this area can help us out here.
LIght on the bottles is bad. The more time it spends on the bottles and the more intense the light, the worse it is. Light on the cellar door is irrelevant unless it reflects onto the bottles. If light is hitting your bottles, move the bottles, cover the door or cover the window/light source. Ultimately the purpose of a wine cellar is to store ageworthy wine in an environment that maximizes the chances that the wine will develop well. Looks are secondary to that.
interesting, Neal, but that article doesn’t say how the wines tasted. Certainly you can store wines like that - that’s not really at issue. The question is how the evolution of the wines is affected. Over a 20 year span or so, I’d not really worry if the wine spent a few weeks in the mid-60s and the rest of the time below that, usually in the 50s. Nor would I worry abou humidity in the 50s… I’d be concerned if the wine spent a lot of time at the 65F or above range (months every year) and I’d be concerned if it spent a lot of time in low humidity.
Well, the '61 Margaux, served to about 25 of us from magnums and straight from their cellars was f’in awesome in 2005. Though there was some bottle variation. It was the only >20 year old vintage served - but still pretty good evidence that passive storage with slow swings from 53-66 degrees is just fine.
Ed B - I didn’t mean to imply '83 Prieure Lichine was a poor wine, just not “great” as in a first growth. I too found it very enjoyable, and over a similar drinking window.
Brett is all around. So if your winery isn’t clean, you probably have bretty wines, and this was characteristic of many French, Italian and Spanish wines in prior years.
Second, with a little oxygen and nutrients, Brettanomyces of some strain or another can grow using the alcohol in the wine as a source of carbon, some amino acids in the wine for nitrogen, and even some of the sugars in the wood of the barrels, particularly the toasted woods. Thus the wine needs to be able to eat up, or use any available oxygen, so as to deprive the Brett of any ability to grow. Also, Brett grows quickly at temperatures above 60 degrees F, so keeping the wine cold is important. But higher pH wines, higher sugar levels, and in some cases, reduced use of sulfur, all contribute to the growth of brett. So even if your winery is clean, your winemaking style may nonetheless contribute to brettiness in your wine.
As the original question had to do with temperature, one might note that lower temps slow the growth of most organisms. So you can store wines warmer than 55F. And you will increase SOME of the aging reactions in your wine. But you will also increase some undesired reactions, like the growth of Brett or various bacteria, and if the latter develop faster than the former, you end up with bad wine.
I don’t think there is any science anywhere that conclusively demonstrates that light or vibration is bad for wine. If there is, please link the site. There is a lot of such information thrown around, but it’s from bloggers, writers, and others repeating what they’ve heard or read, not from scientific papers. At least insofar as I’ve been able to discover. UV rays have been shown to destroy methoxypyrazines, but that’s very different from “light” in general and it’s effect on finished wine that’s in bottles.
This also tracks my anecdotal experience. My father stored wine passively in cellars that for years assuredly rose to levels that Neal’s article describes and suffered no ill effects. We are still drinking first and second growths from that cellar that are stunning and indeed young going back to the 70s and 80s. I guess it’s possible that a colder cellar would have resulted in slower development, but I would like to live to drink my wines at maturity.
As demonstration, however, of how irrational I (and likely others are) about protecting my sizeable investment, I nonetheless have switched to an active system in my house. I need to see a psychiatrist.
So, knowing all this… does it really matter? After all, the reason we try to store out wine at 55-ish with reasonable humidity is that we know it works… good, ageworthy wines will evolve (it’s not too cold) and not let bad things grow in general (it’s not too warm). If you have a passive cellar like Margaux’s that hits the low 60s for a few weeks a year and the transition is slow, you’ll be OK over the timeframes any of us care about (20-30 years). But storing wine at, say, 72 for 20 year will likely not be OK.
While the precise temp of 55 isn’t sacred i just don’t see any practical reason to let wine that you’re storing for medium term aging or longer see temps too much higher than 60 for more than a few weeks a year.
Put simply - when we know the 50s work, why NOT store wine like that?
Put simply - when we know the 50s work, why NOT store wine like that?
Because I want to drink the wine in my lifetime
Active cooling might be an unnecessary expense and is clearly a pain to maintain
Because 60F works, too.
For those who live in northern states, a passive cellar is possible probably with peak summer temps around 60…passive cellars are much easier.
55F is simply the underground temperature of a cellar in central France, most of which lies quite a bit north of 45 degrees in latitude compared to the US where most of our landmass is below 40 degrees, so, really only the Northern most areas of the US will have ground temperatures (say, 9-10 feet down) permitting such a cool, passive cellar.
Considering how many factors surrounding the aging of wine are barely understood, if at all, and how many of them seem competely beyond the control of the wine’s owner, why not give yourself the comfort that you have some control over one factor? I do it, too. I have a temp-controlled storage unit in my place.
I opened a Riesling last night that, two years ago, tasted like the most awkward, clumsy, oafish Mosel wine I had ever opened. Last night it was excellent. I have no idea why, or where it will go from here. But at least I kept it cool!