Completely agree. Old Italians seem to need the longest, at least sometimes, but in general, a day or two is plenty.
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Upright since I’m too cheap to buy baskets (yes I realize the cost is miniscule), but also I’ve switched to siphoning instead of pouring for the very oldest or most sensitive wines. There’s seldom more than an ounce or so of sediment left, even for very old Barolo, and it seems to be the gentlest way to minimize air exposure (vs. pouring)
The workbench is just a place I put bottles I’m planning to drink soon, young or old. I’ve had good results with this method.
6 months of upright bottles and then lay them down a week before drinking. I also can’t see any point in this but now it seems like it’s a very, very, very slow way of oxygenation with 6 months of drying out the cork and slowly letting air in and then laying down in the last week to mix back sediment to counter balance possible premature over-oxygenation. Cool 
!
I don’t think the cork is going to dry out all that much.
Putting it in a cradle just maximizes the yield from the bottle and makes it easier to carry and decant. A week is plenty of time to have no significant sediment. Also I don’t decant most of the wines that are sitting there, it’s mostly a place to put stuff I want to drink, but standing them up can’t hurt.
Where is your YouTube video?
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So now I’m going to ask a stupid question, and equally daft follow-up.
If you open a bottle in a cradle, wouldn’t wine spill out?
If so, and the solution is to open upright, then doesn’t that defeat the purpose of the cradle?
With blushing thanks in advance for the replies.
Just $9.99:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07L9YRCVV/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1
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No, the angle is sufficient that no wine comes out when you pull the cork while the bottle is in the cradle.
Kinda depends on the fill, if it’s pretty high then I will angle the bottle a little up out of the cradle when I open it. Not enough to shake the sediment at the bottom of the bottle. I’m talking maybe an extra 10 degrees up. But most of the time it’s not an issue.
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Here is another dumb question. If you place a bottle into a cradle for 1 to 2 days, where do you keep the cradle? It certainly won’t fit into my wine fridge and to keep it in my wine storage facility kind of makes no sense. Also why is it better than just pouring wine thru a strainer?
Thanks for the comments. Seeing 85% keeping a bottle upright ahead of pouring makes me feel better. That said, will now try to change my wyas.
Filling in the picture…I got a new Eurocave. I went with this model because they have a “tasting shelf” that allows you to store wines vertically. This shelf crushes the capacity of the Eurocave, but I would be pairing Eurocave with an offsite, so I didn’t need max capacity at home.
In the interim, I did see the William Kelley comments re using a wine cradle. And a couple bottles of vertically stored wine had me feeling I wasted a little (more sediment clouded wine at the end of the pour than I expected). So I am only keeping one Tasting Shelf (for presentation purposes/coravined sweets) rather than to store wine. And I reset the remaining horizontal shelves a little wider which would allow propping them up for a slight incline. Looking at it now, I figure this is a minor 15 degree incline. I don’t know if this is enough degrees to make a difference versus pure horizontal… but would certainly make it easier to transition to a cradle from a 0 degree start (figure the cradle is 30 degrees or so?) .
I picked up one cradle off Etsy. Found Etsy to have the best variety. But I haven’t seen any great modern/functional cradles until…
I’ve had this bookmarked for 2 months now. It’s so beautiful. I’d buy these as a gift for people to put their most precious babies in it (as in, real babies freshly delivered). But I won’t spend $400 on a cradle. Maybe we can Beserker Buy 1,000 of these at a time for $75 a pop? I just emailed them asking for 500 @ $50. Maybe someone should add something like to their glassware line.
When you prep your wine/have it in cradle, are you tilting them a full 45 degrees? As I mentioned above, I’ve created a setup where I can incline my wines 15 degrees in storage. But is 15 degrees worth it, or is it way too minor to make any sort of difference?
Strainers, cheese cloth, and even fine coffee filters do not catch all sediment. Some people are more sediment sensitive than others, but I have personally found old pinot/nebbiolo to suffer if you just pour through a whole bottle through even the finist coffee filter, versus just discarding the last couple ounces of sediment heavy wine. The wines can come off more rustic/astringent than they are when poured clean. Standing up wines vertically for a period of time has worked well… as the sediment just collects in the last 1-2 ounces of wine… and I dont even bother with a coffee filter anymore. But, if I can get reduce that loss to 0.5-1.0 ounces of wine consistently, without too much brain damage, I will take that next step.
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My friend has his eurocave set up like yours, where there’s a small incline at the top shelf so he can use it to prep wine. He said it works great.
the idea of the cradle from horizontal is that the fine sediment has all fallen along the horizontal bottom of the wine bottle. Once you tilt it gently into a basket, the sediment that’s already fallen down will slowly slide down into one little corner. So you really don’t need that much time in basket for it to work. The longer it’s in the basket, the more solidified that sediment is at the very bottom corner. I’ve had one that I left in a basket for about 3 months and for a 30+ year old wine I almost got clear wine all the way to the very very bottom as all the gunk had solidified into one chunk.
I just have a bunch of the one wk used in his video, silver plated wire basket looking cradles. I put the bottle in them on my workbench.
After trying a couple bottles… storing in a wine cradle definitely reduces the sediment versus storing vertically or horizontally. The sludge just ends up in the corner and doesn’t get disturbed as much when pouring. I wonder if same outcome can be achieved by just storing vertically for a period, and then horizontally… but I didn’t try this. So thank you @WilliamKelley and others on this board for the cradle recommendation.
What I ended up doing is getting a Eurocave and propping the bottles at an angle with custom cut foam inserts ($40 with shipping from https://www.gotofoam.com/). Any higher value or older bottles will thus be passively stored ‘ready’ to go at a low incline wine cradle. The wines aren’t at the same angle as being in a wine cradle, but I think its a majority of the way there (although not the vast majority). The expended distance between shelves means I have reduced the capacity of the Eurocave. Maybe was way too much brain damage, but I think this will be a better outcome for me than storing just horizontally and transferring one-offs to cradles.
I imagine one could order a long foam insert to lay up mutiple bottles against in a home cellar as well. E.G. you could get taller foam blocks and use a butterknife to cut out divots to make them secure, or put them up a wall, or what not.
I also kept the Tasting Shelf I originally procured for vertical bottle storage. This is purely cosmetic at this point and I may get rid of it. I had originally sought this out to store bottles vertically, which is no longer a need. Eurocave makes the tasting shelf to easily access open bottles… but now I could just lay up such a bottle on an angle with foam and not be worrried about spillage or sediment. Taking out the tasting shelf would give me another 10 or so bottle capacity, but I like the cosmetics of showing a couple labels at the top.
If anyone cares, the foam dimensions I ordered from GoTo foam were: 20" x 4.5" x 3.0", 20" x 4.5" x 2.5", 20" x 4.5" x 2.0". I think I ended up only using the 3.0" and 2.5" height pieces, but would need to check.
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Have now opened up two bottles that have been standing up the longest, '88 De la Tour Clos Vougeot for 2 years and '87 Flora Springs for at least 3 (and more likely 4). No problems with the corks and the fills stayed consistent with the FS being well into the neck.
The CV was brilliant and we will see today for the Flora Springs.
The angled storage with the foam inserts is definitely working better than storing vertically. The angle is enough for sludge to form in the corner. Definitely get more wine when I use this method to double decant versus storing vertically.
Let me know if this link works. I’ve never tried to post a video; this one’s a time-lapse.
I have opened a lot of 40-70 year old Barolos, and the decanting stand, Durand, candle or flashlight, and water then distilled water rinse of the bottle consistently works great.
Thanks for the thread. It reminded me of something.
I’ve been in the business for 40+ years, but can always learn something new. I posted some months ago about a great wine dinner with my friend Steve Morrison of Sterling Cellars in Mahopac, NY. He brought a wine tool I had never seen before, and have since ordered. It’s a bottle insert with an extremely fine stainless steel mesh.
I stand up my old reds for a day (2 or 3 if really old), then decant. I have a cradle that I use very infrequently for decanting very very old wines. For a quick and excellent way to get rid of sediment if the bottle has been jostled or hasn’t had time to settle, this is excellent, inexpensive and foolproof.
Dan Kravitz
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