Virtually every bottle we drink goes thru that change when I take it out of the cellar. Sometimes I return a bottle to the cellar and have seen no degradation.
In the summer it might go to 75.
A passive cellar is better than no cellar. Your wines in a passive cellar with a 20 degree swing kept for 20 years will taste different to the same wine in a cold cellar for the same time … but they will taste better than ones not in a cellar. Your wines will not be spoilt just different. Enjoy owning a cellar.
I agree with what I think are Alan and Greg’s positions: What damages wine is if the maximum temperature it reaches is too high (high 70s, 80s?), and how long it stays there, not how quickly it gets there. I wouldn’t be concerned about temperature swings that got no higher than the mid-sixties.
^^This.
Frankly, I’m a bit disappointed in this thread. Normally, a thread based on cellar temps would have already been filled with statements of opinion and anecdote, presented as fact. Very Un-Berserker…
Interestinng though is the following: Will wine stored for 15 years at say 65 F in a cellar taste better or worse than a bottle stored at 55 F for 20 years.
This is important because a number of us are not getting any younger and are not interested in trading the wine. So, I would not mind storing a few of my best 2012 Burg at 65 F if this means they age a tiny bit quicker so that all my gustative bits are not gone before the wine is ready to drink.
If it’s going from 45 in winter to 65 in summer, I’m very confident that in the winter the temperature of the wine gets down to about 45. Yes, wine is slower to change temperature than the air, but not that slow.
As already said above:
rapid fluctuation is not good … if you have 45° F during night and 65° during day, that is stressing the wine and it will get tired over a longer period.
But if you´ve got 45° in winter and 65° in summer, that´s more perfect than many a producers cellar in France.
Sure the wines will mature slightly faster than in a cellar fluctuating only between 45 and 55 over the year, but the difference is only noticable after a decade or two - and it will be no problem at all.
E.g. some of my mature Chateauneufs (1988-90) - stored between 45° (7°C) in winter and 53° (12°C) in summer are definitely fresher than at the domaine in CdP, but both are still fine.
Antoine,
I don´t think there is any really scientific research on this question - so all I can say is pure speculation!
My estimate would be:
Yes, the wine 15y/65° will be (slightly) more mature that the wine 20y/55° …
and yes, the 2nd wine (20y, 55°) will taste slightly better, at least fresher, than the 1st wine …
but
- the difference will be marginal - let´say 92 points versus 91 points,
and 2) you have no chance to compare them side by side at all (to verify it) …
So if you would like to drink a 2010 in 2025 beause you are afraid to be dead in 2030 … I would prefer to store it at 65° … ![[cheers.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/0/0ff9bfcdb0964982cd3240b6159868fbdf215b1a.gif "cheers"){kind=small}
(and if you are still alive in 2030 you picked the ass-card … ![[tease.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/c/c5b32b76bebaa359b0452ae247b61189ffe5fa7e.gif "tease"){kind=small}
)
Two hours in the sun on the back window of a car in the Caribbean will get you pretty far north of 75 degrees. I bet it got close to 100 degrees F. I would have very few worries about wine going from 55 to 65, or even 75, in a few hours, as long as it didn’t stay there for years. Unless the cork seal was so tenuous to begin with that a small shift in pressure, as Alan derived above, would be enough to break the seal, it should have little effect. But I wouldn’t want my wine getting anywhere near 100, even for a few minutes, and no matter how slowly the temperature went up.
Looks like I read the OP a little to fast. I though he meant 45-65 diurnal swing, not seasonal. On that note I would use a heater to keep it warmer than 45, say 50-52 minimum. For a couple reasons, first your going to get a lot more tartrates/sediment thrown at temps below 55 as most cellars for winemaking do not get colder than that. As well as at those colder temperatures you can’t enjoy wine right from the cellar as you have to go thru a process to bring it up to drinking temp, unless you have a lot of white or bubbles or keep your house in the mid 70’s in the winter.
Due to our diurnal temperature swing of 55* during the growing season and yearly average of near 50, I am passive in spring and fall and have a heater for winter, a/c for summer and a humidifier year around. I like to keep my cellar 58-62 so I can pop and pour the first glass.
Maybe this is true, but I’m not sure why the two cases should be different. It’s the same total time at lower and higher temperatures, when you integrate it over a long period. Since there are different reaction rates at different temps, I would expect the more rapidly fluctuating case to produce slightly different results than the slow fluctuation (because different reaction products will build up at different times, and those could be the precursors to other reactions and products); but it’s complicated, and I doubt anyone has done the actual experiment. The point being, this seems like “conventional wisdom” to me, without any real basis in fact.
Where does this notion of the importance of humidity come from? The humidity at the business end of the cork is always 100%…
Pretty sure the importance stems from a potential for cork shrinkage under dry conditions, which could compromise the seal in older bottles.
The humidity of a cellar changes what evaporates, the ullage. The equilibrium point for equal evaporation of water and alcohol is roughly 70% relative humidity. If you have humidity over 70% more alcohol evaporates than water, if the humidity is under 70%, more water evaporates than alcohol. With out any humidity the ullage is greatly increased and will result in low fill/premox wines if aging for an extended period of time.
Some winemakers use high humidity barrel storage to decrease alcohol and some use low humidity to increase it.
Hey now professor, berserkers don’t lower themselves with chemical reaction rates and riemman sums. ![[berserker.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/8/8600bbd4810d342b8fbd4ffb62b4f0026275fd37.gif "berserker"){kind=small}
Something some people don’t think about is that air temperature is one thing but air and glass are poor heat conductors. So that passive cellar (like a dark closet in the middle of a house or basement), even if the temperature goes up 10 degrees…it will take some time for the temp of wine in the bottles to rise up in response. By then, it’s evening and ambient temperature drops down again. Also a packed closet full of wine has quite a bit of thermal mass.
As anecdotal evidence, I have a friend who has such a closet in his San Francisco apartment. Full of 1970s-early 90s Bordeaux and Burgs. Aside from a few leaky corks, some crumbly corks, the wines are drinking very well right now. I remember a 82 conseillante very fondly, that he opened for me three years ago.
All my wines have some sort of a seal between the wine and the outside world, thus rendering the humidity in the outside world largely moot, I would think. Do you have any data to back up your assertion that ullage is increased in the presence of low humidity? Or is it merely conjecture based on conventional wisdom?
Alex’s comment that low humidity may increase the potential for cork shrinkage has some merit, but again, is there anything to this idea beyond a traditional concept?
Todd, I’ve often read that ullage offers no absolute indication of quality (although there’s a greater chance of the wine being faulty when it’s lower). Ullage seems to be of greatest concern when buying older wines of questionable or unknown provenance.
The cork shrinkage issue again comes from reading, not personal experience and I recall reading anecdotes from people with mature, passive cellars where they’ve had problems with corks in older wines slipping into the bottle upon opening or even just from moving.
The seal between the wine and the outside world is not inert, unless were talking about screw caps, glass locks, or very heavily waxed bottles. Corks are very hydroscopic (able to hold and transfer volatile liquids) and they are 6-8% water. They want to equalize the humidity on both ends. If one is has less humidity there is evaporation towards the end with lower humidity. Its the equalization principal that drives the force of evaporation thru the cork from the wine side to the outside environment. What replaces the evaporation of wine and alcohol is air which has oxygen which is what ages the wine.
Any winemaker who uses barrels understands the same theory in a little faster form. Wine in barrel is in contact with its entire surface area with even more hydroscopic oak. Neutral barrels allow an ingress of oxygen at a rate of 7-8 mg/l/year at 70% rh (2-3 times that for a new barrel). Corks have a higher range but average .8-1.4 mg/l/year. If you don’t keep your humidity up in a barrel cellar evaporation increases and so does oxygen ingress leading to the need to top sooner or wines that will oxidize faster and hit peak aging curves sooner.
If you don’t keep your humidity up in a bottle cellar the increase of evaporation will also increase in ingress of oxygen to replace the lost volume.
I hope I answered your question. If not fully I can dig thru winemaking books and the internets to find actual data/studies. The principals are relatively basic (hydroscopic properties, and the equalization principal of liquids/gasses) and have been observed for hundreds of years in wine before the science principals caught up.
That’s a great answer Joe. Thanks for something concrete. I wonder what the effect humidity has in terms of discernible changes in the wine when we’re talking about rates of oxygen ingress that are that small though.
Joe, the rate of diffusion of water thru wood barrels is high, so maintaining high room humidity slows down the rate of evaporation from the ouside surface of the barrel. In turn this increases the concentration of water in the wood at the outside surface and slows down the rate of diffusion.
The rate of diffusion of water thru cork is miniscule, and much slower than the rate of evaporation of water from the outside surface of the cork nomatter the room humidity.
Thus, IMNSHO, humidity in a barrel room has an important effect, but humidity in a wine cellar has no effect.