1. If the conditions aren’t right, the wine will rot.  There’s nothing worse than opening a bottle after years of storage, only to discover that instead of aging gracefully, it’s turned to vinegar.  Keep the temperature of your wine cellar, wine refrigerator, wine closet, or wine cabinet between 50 and 65 degrees F for red wine and 45 to 60 degrees for white wine.

2. Here’s a nifty trick: since heat rises, and white wines need cooler conditions than reds do, keep white wines close to the floor and red wines closer to the ceiling.

3. Maintain a relative humidity between 50 and 70%.  Click here for our discussion on the importance of the right humidity for wine aging.

4. Keep bottles out of the light as much as possible.  When you do need to flip the switch to read the labels, make sure you’re using incandescent, not florescent—the extra UV light from florescent bulbs can penetrate the glass and interfere with the wine’s aging process.

5. Store bottles on their sides to keep the cork moist (a too-dry cork can shrink or even crack, letting in too much air and ruining the wine).

6. Use racks specifically designed for wine storage.  Certain types of woods and treatments can impart undesirable tastes to the bottles or can not rot in the damp, cool climate of your wine cellar.

7. Since you want to protect your wines from temperature fluctuations, and the areas nearest the door of your wine cellar are most vulnerable to temperature and humidity shifts, keep the younger wines that you plan to drink soon near the door, and the investment bottles that you want to age in the back corners.

8. Protect your wines from vibration.  Put your wine cellar in an appropriate place (a professional can help you find one), and avoid picking up the bottles.  Hang wine tags on the necks of your stored sideways bottles and write the label information on them.  This way, you can browse through your collection without disturbing the bottles.

9. The best way to ensure your collection is organized is to keep a regularly updated database of what’s currently in your cellar.  You can use a book or even a computer spreadsheet.  There is also some nifty software built for managing wine collections. Your records should note when you bought the wine, its name, region, producer, vineyard name, price paid, estimated value and future value, and leave space for tasting notes—the most important part!—for when you finally drink it.

You love wine.  You spend a lot of time drinking it, thinking about it, and buying it.  You’d love to start a real collection rather than stashing the bottle haphazardly on a rack in your kitchen, but you live in a small loft apartment.  There’s hardly enough room for your stuff, let alone enough empty space for a wine cellar or even a wine refrigerator.  Your dreams of a great wine collection have been dashed against the rocks of your cramped reality.  Right?  Wrong.

A lack of space doesn’t make collecting wine impossible.  You just have to get creative.  Many reputable wine refrigerator manufacturers also make small wine cabinets that are perfect for the collector with big dreams and small spaces.  These wine cabinets are just like their full-sized counterparts: they are outfitted with high-tech humidity and temperature controls designed for wine storage.  Storing your wine in the proper environment is what makes it age well.  The right climate will provide a cool, moist place for your bottles, letting the reactions between the chemicals in the wine, which give properly aged wine its rich, nuanced flavor, a chance to happen.  Wine cabinets keep these same chemicals from being adversely affected by light, humidity fluctuations, and vibrations, thus protecting your investment and helping ensure that when you finally open that bottle of Cabernet, it will have been worth the wait.

There are a variety of different wine cabinet sizes out there, each one perfect for a unique storage situation.  There are wine cabinets out there that hold 200 bottles or less.  For sincerely limited storage space, there are even wine cabinets that can fit under the counter in your home or restaurant—they’re only about 30 inches high, and they hold 30 bottles.  Avanti makes several wine refrigerators with a compact design that can be freestanding or be easily installed under a counter.  They have a sleek, modern look and digital controls that allow you to adjust the conditions inside the cabinet with the touch of a button.

Another option for the space-challenged is a wine credenza.  A credenza is a long, low cabinet that is usually seen in a dining room.  Some companies make credenzas in luxurious woods with beautiful detailing—you can place them alongside a wall in your dining room and they are both a practical and beautiful way to show off your collection.  Since the credenza performs double duty, it is a great way to save space.  The top of the credenza can be used as a sideboard for serving food, as a bar area, or as a place to display your fine china or other kitchenware.  Vinotheque makes some of the most functional and aesthetically pleasing wine credenzas out there.

Moral of the story: don’t be deterred from collection because you don’t have the space.  Think outside the cellar and check out some of the great solutions for wine storage in small spaces that are out there.

We know that wine has to be kept at a low temperature in order to age well.  It’s logical—we keep our perishable items cool so that they don’t spoil as quickly, and wine is, of course, a perishable item.  But what’s with the humidity thing?  Does wine really need to be kept at a certain level of humidity in order to keep from spoiling and aid aging?  Or is that just a useless feature that wine cellar makers have convinced us we need?  Bottom line: what does a wine refrigerator have that a regular refrigerator doesn’t?

The reason we need a humid environment in which to store wine mostly has to do with the cork.  So let’s talk about cork and it’s role in wine storage:  Cork comes from cork trees, which are mostly grown in Europe, and so is an organic substance.  (Incidentally, cork growing is a completely sustainable type of farming, since the tree is not killed to harvest the cork, and cork forests across the world protect many rare species of plants and animals, not to mention the cork farmers that rely on the trees for their livelihood.  If you want to read our argument in support of keeping corks natural, click here.)

Cork is the ideal material for sealing wine bottles, because it can expand and contract as its environment changes.  This is particularly useful for wine, because the glass bottles wine is kept in change their shape with the weather—cooler temperature cause the silicon dioxide molecules that make up glass to squeeze closer together, shrinking the bottle.  Warmer conditions cause them to spread out, expanding the bottle.  Although you want to protect your wine from temperature fluctuations, it is naturally and unavoidably exposed to a variety of environments (when it’s being bottled, when it’s being shipped, and when you’re taking it home from the store, for example).  The plastic nature of cork means that it expands and contracts with the glass, maintaining a tight seal between your wine and the outside world.

So, corks are very important for maintaining stable conditions inside your wine bottle.  And humidity is essential to maintaining the integrity of a cork.  Too dry, and the cork shrinks, letting in too much oxygen and causing cork taint (when a cork is so dry it cracks when you pull it out, the wine is almost certain to be ruined).  Too wet, and mold can form on the corks—it can rot them out and taint your wine.  (However, a little mold on the outside of a very old bottle’s cork is perfectly normal, as long as the mold is only on the dry side.)

The ideal humidity level at which to store wine is 50%-70% relative humidity.  The best kind of humidifiers are generally separate from the cooling systems, although if you live in a humid area or have a certain type of cooling system, you might be ok.  Through-the-wall humidifiers are the most heavy-duty choice.

Another very cool option is a fountain humidifier.  These work by circulating water through a fountain, allowing it to evaporate into the air and humidify the environment.  These wine cellar humidifier fountains can be a unique and aesthetically pleasing part of a wine cellar, and they are sure a conversation starter—no one expects to see a fountain among the dusty bottles.  Fountain humidifiers, however, don’t provide as much humidifying power as through-the-wall humidifiers, so if you live in the desert, one might not be an option.

You can learn more about humidifying a wine cellar and types of humidifiers here in our Education Center.

The humidity factor is what differentiates a wine cellar from a refrigerator.  The right humidity is crucial to the success of your wine aging endeavors.  Humidity needs change from area to area, and humidifiers require that your wine cellar is properly insulated and sealed to work properly, so make sure you contact a wine cellar professional about your specific humidification needs.

Do you have aspirations to build a great wine collection but don’t know where to start?  Have you collected a few bottles but are unsure about how to build what you have into a cohesive collection?  Here are some tips and hints to help  you out.

The best way to start is to educate yourself.  Before you’re ready to spend your money on a bottle worth aging in a wine cellar, you need to figure out how to pick out a good one.  Read books, articles, and blogs on wine.  But don’t forget that the best way to learn is through practice.  Be proactive in your learning.  Visit wine stores and talk to the knowledgeable employees.  Go to wine tastings and talk to the employees there–they are often a wealth of information that most people ignore, and they love to tell you about the differences between vintages and varietals.

You also need to lean what wines you like.  There’s no sense investing time and money into a bottle of oaked Chardonnay, only to find out that you really don’t like oaky wines.  Now, it’s easy to decide whether you like or dislike a particular bottle.  It’s harder to remember what bottles you like and what bottles you don’t when you’re in the wine shop ready to purchase.  The best way to quickly build up an inventory of your tastes in wine is to keep a wine notebook.  Whenever you taste a wine, take a few notes on it.  Use a simple rating system (1-10, for example), so that you can easily tell how you felt about a particular wine.  When you’re at the store facing hundreds of bottles, a wine notebook will help you have purpose and direction.  If you can’t try a particular wine before purchase, check out online reviews.

If you have a wine cellar or a wine cabinet or refrigerator, it’s imperative that you learn about wine aging.  Some wines age better than others.  Some should age for only 2 years, while others can benefit from 20 years of aging or more.  Besides reading and talking to experts, a good way to learn about aging is to tag your bottles.  Buy several bottles of the same varietal and vintage.  Tag them with the date that you stored them.  As you open each bottle, take notes!  (Remember that wine notebook? This is another thing it’s good for.)   Another benefit of buying in bulk is price.  Buying a case of wine (12 bottles) is usually more cost effective than buying those bottles individually.  But 12 bottles is a lot, so make sure you like the wine before you buy a whole case.

Don’t forget that wine is supposed to be fun.  Don’t be afraid to step out of your comfort zone and try new varietals.  If you love Merlot, branch out a bit and try other reds–you might find yourself falling in love with Spanish Rioja or even California Cabernet Sauvignon.  But if you find that there’s nothing you like better than a buttery Chardonnay, feel no shame in stocking your wine cellar with dozens of bottles of the stuff you love.  It’s your wine collection, after all, and it should be a reflection of you.

Building a wine collection can be a pleasurable and interesting pastime that you can enjoy for the rest of your life.  Having knowledge of wine, and a collection that reflects that knowledge, is something wine collectors get a great deal of satisfaction from.  But there’s no sense in putting time and money into wine collection unless you have a proper place to store it.  Wine stored incorrectly won’t age well, and you’ll find bottle after bottle of your hard-won collection opening up rancid.  Check back for our next post on the right way to store wine.

If you’re just starting out collecting wine, you probably find wine labels more than a little daunting.  How do you pick through all the fine print and strange words to get the information you need?  What’s just advertising and what’s useful to know?

Although every wine bottle is different, and labeling practices differ between countries and even wineries, there is information listed on every bottle that will help you find out more about the wine in the bottle.  Let’s decode it:

Wine maker or winery: Usually in the largest font and often at the top of the bottle (though it can be located in the middle or bottom too) is the name of the company that made the wine.  In the French label pictured here, the winemaker is Jo Pithon.

Vintage: Contrary to popular belief, vintage does not denote the year the wine was bottled, but rather the year that the grapes were harvested.  Some wine makers may wait several years before turning grapes into wine.  Here, the vintage is listed as 1994.

Appellation: The bottle will always list the country or region where the grapes that made the wine were grown.  Appellations can be as broad as “The Napa Valley” or as specific as the vineyard the grapes were grown in.  But beware: just because the wine label lists a certain appellation doesn’t necessarily mean that all the grapes that went into the wine were grown there.  Most regulations allow from as much as 15% of the grapes to be grown elsewhere.  Here, the appellation is listed in the middle of the label as Coteaux du Layon St. Aubin. This information is also listed near the bottom of the label.  The word Controlée after the appellation means that the area the wine was grown in is defined as a wine-growing region by French law.

Varietal: Many, but not all, wine labels list the varietal, or the specific kind (or kinds) of grapes that went into the wine.  Most Italian and French wines (like the one pictured) do not list the varietal, because their wine laws dictate that the wines from each region must be made from traditional varieties.

Ripeness and Quality: Some wines list information about the ripeness of the grapes used.  They may also list information about the quality of the wine.  This is common in wines from Germany and Austria (but wouldn’t it be helpful information from all wineries?)

Other: Much more additional information is often available, what it is depends on the bottle.  If a wine is estate bottled (made from grapes grown in the winery’s vineyard), the label will usually say so.  The wine’s alcohol content and the size of the bottle will usually be disclosed.  In the U.S., the back label of the wine will contain the Surgeon General’s warning regarding alcohol consumption and whether the wine contains sulfites.  The back label also, of course, carries the description of the wine, but you can usually disregard this as advertising hype rather than useful information.

Next time you purchase a bottle of wine, take a second look at the label.  You can learn a lot about the wine in the bottle if only you know where to look.

Sure, you’ve heard that wine should always be stored on its side.  But grocery stores and even many wine shops display their bottles upright.  The bottle is meant to stand that way for a reason, right?  Wrong.  Storing wine in the vertical position, especially if you’re trying to age it, is a big mistake that can ruin your wine.

Here’s why: your wine shares a fickle friendship with oxygen.  Oxygen reacts with the chemicals in your wine to change its flavor compounds.  In other words, without oxygen, wine could not age.  But oxygen also reacts with the alcohol in wine to form acetic acid, or vinegar.  Exposure to too much oxygen will ruin a bottle of wine.

So how do you limit the amount of oxygen that comes in contact with the wine?  This is where the cork comes in.  An old but ingenious solution to the oxygen problem, a cork can expand and contract as its environment changes.  Storing a bottle of wine upright keeps the cork high and dry, away from the wine.  It can dry out, and when it dries, it shrinks, leaving room for air to enter the bottle and let oxygen react with the wine.

When you store a bottle of wine on its side, the liquid keeps the cork moist.  The cork keeps its size (and can even expand if needed, for instance, if a warm environment causes the glass bottle to expand), and so maintains a tight seal against the outside air.  The only air that gets in is through the small pores in the cork–the perfect amount to age the wine well.

The best way to store wine on its side is in a wine rack specifically designed for the purpose.  Vintage Cellars offers a variety of beautiful and functional wine racks.  Check them out here.

For the wine consumer, the Great Cork Debate is nothing if not confusing.  ”Experts” sound off about the pros of one and cons of the other, often in complete contradiction with other “experts”.   It’s easy to find yourself bewildered to immobility in the middle of a wine shop, a natural corked wine in your left hand, a synthetic corked bottle in your right, and a screw cap in front of you.  Headaches like these can drive the most devoted wine enthusiast to consider collecting something else instead…perhaps hard liquor.

As it turns out, the loudest voices in support of synthetic corks and screw caps often belong to those who make their living bottling wine.  And this really isn’t surprising, considering that the wine stopper industry rakes in $4 billion a year, and that synthetic corks and screw caps are considerably cheaper to produce than traditional corks.

And they do have a strong argument for getting rid of traditional corks: cork taint.  Every wine collector has experienced that deep disappointment that comes when a bottle that’s been carefully aging for years opens up smelling like wet cardboard, due to a chemical compound called trichloroanisole (TCA), which occurs naturally in some corks.  Depending on which study you look at, cork taint affects between 3 and 15 percent of bottles.  Those aren’t numbers to be taken lightly, especially when we’re talking about the often-expensive wines meant for aging.

But what these proponents of man-made corks or screw caps usually fail to mention is that there are also significant problems with these cork substitutes.  Here are a few:

• Synthetic corks don’t change with their surroundings. The glass that all wine bottles are made of expands and contracts with small temperature shifts in the environment around it.  Natural cork expands and contracts with the bottle, keeping the seal between wine and air consistently snug.  And environmental consistency is the number one rule of wine aging.  A too-loose synthetic cork can let in too much oxygen, ruining the wine by letting the alcohol turn into acetic acid, or vinegar.  A too-tight cork can be tough to remove from the bottle.  The latter is a common problem with synthetic corks: after about 18 months, they can be too tight to extract without a fight.
• A small amount of oxygen is necessary for aging wine. Without oxygen, most of the natural reactions that occur between the hundreds of chemical compounds in a bottle of wine can’t happen, and the wine can’t develop so-called “aging flavors,” notes that can make a Chardonnay “buttery” or a Cab taste of truffles.  Screwcaps and synthetic corks prevent oxygen from getting to the wine.  Sure, this prevents over-oxidation, but so does drinking wine the day it’s bought.  In short, a synthetic-corked bottle doesn’t really “age”–it’s just taking up space in the cellar.
• Screw caps can trap unsavory gases inside the bottle, ruining the wine’s aroma. Some of the reactions that occur within an aging wine result in sulfury gases.  These are allowed to dissapate through a natural cork and leave the wine, but are trapped by screw caps, resulting in a rotten-egg smell in the final product.
• Synthetic corks and screw caps could leech chemicals into the wine. We don’t yet know how the compounds that make up plastics interact with the compounds in wine, but there are many studies that indicate the harmful effects the ingestion of plastics can have on the human body.
• For once, it turns out that the old way of doing things was more environmentally friendly. Cork is taken from
  

  Recently harvested cork oaks

  cork trees in sheets once every ten years.  This process doesn’t harm the tree, and in fact, the cork grows back, making it a renewable resource.  A typical cork oak can continue producing for 200 years.  Cork orchards, with cover huge swaths of land in Span, Algeria, Morocco, Italy, Tunisia, France, and Portugal, provide an environment for flora and fauna, including endangered species like the Iberian lynx, Barbary deer, and the Imperial Iberian eagle.  Farming the cork provides jobs for over 100,000 people.  The cork trees also trap vast amounts of carbon dioxide, lessening pollution.  Almost 70% of the product from these cork farms goes directly to the wine stopper industry.  Without it, the orchards and the protection they provide for people, animals, and the environment, would disappear.

• Steps are being taken to lessen the occurence of cork taint in natural-corked bottles. Major manufacturers have invested millions in recent years to screening their cork more carefully and upgrading their production processes.  As a result, cork taint rates have been dropping.

Besides all these practical reasons to refuse to move to synthetic corks, there’s a very deep psychological one.  The satisfying “pop” signals that a tradition almost as old as civilization itself is about to begin.  Wine is an organic, breathing substance.  It is its nature to change over time, and to change not in a formulaic way, but in a way influenced by its environment and the skill of those in charge of it.  To lock it behind machine-produced plastic is to lessen the artistry of wine aging.

 

Building a personal custom wine cellar has increased in popularity in recent years, but so have wine storage facilities.  There are many advantages to a storing your wine in such a facility, including 24 hour temperature monitoring, walk in or locker style storage and even pick up and delivery service.  There are equally as many disadvantages that may accompany such a facility, including access to your collection, available wine racking, rent and available rental space.  A wine storage facility can be a great short term solution or even temporary holding facility, but for the real enthusiast or budding collector is it time to consider a personal custom wine cellar?

 A custom wine cellar is the wisest investment one can make if you have a large or growing collection of wine and vintages that require aging and proper storage to reach their full potential.  Truly, a wine cellar will add to the enjoyment of wine and wine collecting.  Starting from scratch, you can design and build a custom cellar specifically for your wine collection, taking into account available space, budget, cooling unit application and the convenience of ready access to your collection. 

 Recently, the wine cellar became the number one new addition to a luxury home, just passing the theater room.  Though a wine room should be built for your personal enjoyment, it does add to the resale value of a home.  A custom wine cellar can come in all shapes and sizes.  Racks can be designed using racking kits or Vintage Cellars Distinctive Series Hand Made Racking.  The great thing about a wine cellar is that it can be designed and built to fit your collection and match your personality.  Analyze how much you will grow your collection over the next 10 years, how much space you would have to rent in a storage facility, where in your house could you build a cellar.

 Back in August of 2008, I met with a client that wanted to consider turning an interior closet space into a wine cellar.  The space would hold about 300 bottles and it was going to be near impossible to install a cooling unit.  In the same meeting, we ventured into the laundry room to look at using 10 feet of wall space and closing it in glass.  Once again, project cost versus the number of bottles stored did not add up.  We then walked outside to talk about an entire addition onto the home.  What we ended up with was an addition onto a house, complete with an tasting room, flat screen TV and custom hand made wine racking for 2400 (including a library ladder to reach up to 11 feet). 

 Dream about your personal wine cellar and find a way to make it come true.

 Let me start by asking you a simple question; how much do you spend on wine each year?  For most people, the passion for wine starts with a bottle here and a bottle there.  The next thing you know, you have a wine rack on the kitchen counter with 8 bottles.  It might be time to start considering protecting the investment.  Wine purchased off your favorite 90 point scale for under $25 can still benefit and remain fresh under the proper conditions. 

 Ideal wine storage conditions are a constant 55 degrees with a relative humidity about 70%, away for direct sunlight, heat and vibration.  When you consider a wine storage cabinet, my first recommendation: stay within your budget.  My second: consider the space or location available.  Wine cabinets come in all shapes and sizes, from 6 bottles to 600 so my last recommendation: don’t undersize. 

 When I began collecting, I made that error.  I filled a 56 bottle Avanti cabinet within 6 months.  After gaining some experience in the matter, a 220 bottle cabinet was the perfect size to fit my wine collecting habit.  Wine tasting and collecting can quickly become an addiction.  Allow yourself room to grow.

Location and available space are very important factors.  Wine cabinets and wine refrigerators come in all physical sizes but they have something in common: cooling.  There are front, side and rear venting cabinets designed to fit just about any space.  Make sure you consultant with a wine cabinet specialist to make sure the cooling system in the cabinet will work in your environment.  Not all cabinets can operate in a garage setting due to extreme summer temperatures.   Many wine cabinets can only operate with exterior temperatures less then 80 degrees.  A top venting wine cabinet will need about 17 inches of head room for air exchange.  Side and rear venting cabinets also need space to exchange air.  Consult an expert.   

 Keeping budget in mind (like all “appliances” or “furniture”) you can go affordable to top of the line.  There is a simple formula to consider: take the number of bottles the cabinet stores and multiply it by the average price per bottle you would store.  The more expensive your bottles, the more you want to protect that investment with the highest quality product available.   

 You may be at the beginning, middle or maxed out your collection.  Either way, make sure you consider budget, location and size when purchasing a wine cabinet.

If you haven’t seen it, I’m sure you might be ready to jump out of your seat. On Saturday (8/8/09) I came across and article in the LA Times Business section, “Plastic bottles aim to remold wine industry”. This article has brought up recent memories for the cork versus screw top debate. Now, no one who knows me would consider me a wine “snob” but I do have my opinions on the subject… Plastic wine bottles are a short term solution!

Reading about these plastic wine bottles, I don’t think wine collectors and wine cellar owners are going to budge from the traditional glass bottle. Plastic wine bottles will come with a “use by” date. The serious wine enthusiast and wineries that produce wine that is designed to be aged will have no use for plastic. Can you imagine a Vintage Port that could easily age 25 to 30 years in a plastic bottle?

So you really see this trend as a true change is the wine industry? No, I don’t. I see this as a way to get mass consumed product to the mass consumer. The plastic wine bottles are lighter making shipping costs less; they hold more, allowing for a few more glasses on a per bottle basis. This is a trend that can affect wines that are designed to drink right off the shelf. I just don’t see this as a major change in the industry. 

High end wine stores, where the wine collector shops, probably will not carry wine in a plastic bottle. I’m positive you won’t find a Premier Cru available in a plastic bottle unless it’s done by Chateau de Plastique.
This article may surprise you and it may not. If you still have plans to build a beautiful wine cellar, don’t stop. Good wine in a bottle is still meant to keep at a constant 55-57 degree temperature with a relative humidity around 60%. Some traditions will never go away. Maybe another time we will discuss the screw top!