Am I Damaging my wines with the 70 degree summer temps in my cellar?

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Am I Damaging my wines with the 70 degree summer temps ... - 8/3/2015 9:19:02 PM

pdxwinegeek

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I store my wine in an un-HVAC'ed below-ground utility room off my basement in Portland, OR.

For most of the year the temps stick around 55-60, but as the summers get hotter the temps in there are getting above 70 for long stretches of time.

I do have wines I hope too keep for 15+ years in there, am I damaging those bottles with the periodic higher than ideal temps?

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RE: Am I Damaging my wines with the 70 degree summer te... - 8/3/2015 9:27:42 PM

dsGris

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I am in the same situation. My basement stays about 65-70F year around with spill over cooling in the summer and heating in the winter. It's drastic swings to worry about. I would worry about old DRC or Bordeaux, but your wines should do fine for the next twenty years or so. My wife keeps her whites and rosé in a ref, but she likes them chilled and they do not last long anyway.

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RE: Am I Damaging my wines with the 70 degree summer te... - 8/3/2015 11:59:33 PM

champagneinhand

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i sit around 66F in the Summers with 80% humidity. The temperature is fine unless it radically swings one way or the other. With more bottles that gets harder and harder because they hold the chill pretty well. I personally think that humidity is a bigger factor than lower over all temperatures as well as darkness as much as possible, especially for your champagne and white wines. Try and keep those bottles asocial and dark by keeping them nearer the bottom of the racking if need be. Again more bottles keeps that under check, as I recently bought a digital hygrometer/thermometer to sit on the cellar floor and it reads almost exactly the same as the analog device placed 2m high. Next to the interior basement door. I think my basement may be a few degrees cooler in Summer, but I keep the overall humidity around 60% for the finished basement.

AsDenis states its the slow changes that make passive cellars ideal. No worries if the temp peaks around 72F.

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RE: Am I Damaging my wines with the 70 degree summer te... - 8/4/2015 3:36:19 AM

gilrbo

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I also think this is no problem if the change is very slow. But how much above 70F are you and for how long?
In my passive cellar I reach 20C (=68F) in summer for about a month.

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RE: Am I Damaging my wines with the 70 degree summer te... - 8/4/2015 7:10:05 AM

dbg

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I had an opportunity to do multiple side-by-side comparisons with a few cases of 1983 Prieure Lichine bought on release from the same store by my father and me, then split between us. His passive cellar with slow seasonal swings from low 60s to low 70s vs. my actively cooled cellar at 57 degrees. After 10 years, I inherited a case from him and was able to compare it to my bottles at several time points over the next 10 years. Some of these were blind comparisons and some were not. In most cases, the passively stored bottles tasted more aged and started to fade earlier than the actively stored bottles. I didn't perceive any major difference in how good they were at peak, but these weren't profound wines to begin with.

So my advice is to install a cooling system if you really value aged wines over 15 years old and plan to store them that long.

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RE: Am I Damaging my wines with the 70 degree summer te... - 8/4/2015 1:09:24 PM

Sourdough

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I have little direct experience but what I have agrees with dbg's observation of slightly to somewhat faster aging. This is to be expected for chemical reactions proceed faster at higher temperatures. (under normal conditions). It would not be surprising if the end point were to be slightly different but natural bottle variation may well mask this aspect.

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RE: Am I Damaging my wines with the 70 degree summer te... - 8/4/2015 3:33:13 PM

Blue Shorts

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quote:

ORIGINAL: pdxwinegeek

I store my wine in an un-HVAC'ed below-ground utility room off my basement in Portland, OR.

For most of the year the temps stick around 55-60, but as the summers get hotter the temps in there are getting above 70 for long stretches of time.

I do have wines I hope too keep for 15+ years in there, am I damaging those bottles with the periodic higher than ideal temps?

pdxwinegeek

The easy answer is "It depends".

Most wine "experts" recommend a temperature of about 54 degrees F for storage. THe thinking is that 54 degrees is the sweet spot where the good chemical reactions are maximized while the bad chemical reactions are minimized. As the temperature increases, you get more of the "bad" chemical reactions.

So if you store your wines at 70F, you likely won't notice much difference in the short term. However, as you age the wines longer, their lives will be shortened and they will have more "bad" elements.

So, I guess you are shortening the lives of your wines by storing them above 54F. How much difference there will be depends on the wine and the age.

I would be concerned about keeping wines 15+ years at any temperature over 60F. That is a large investment in time and money. Can you imagine the horror when you find out, 20 years from now, that your great wines are not so great anymore?

< Message edited by Blue Shorts -- 8/4/2015 3:35:12 PM >

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RE: Am I Damaging my wines with the 70 degree summer te... - 8/4/2015 6:16:49 PM

KPB

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I'm with the others. Even 70 pushes the limits. Well above is just too hot.

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RE: Am I Damaging my wines with the 70 degree summer te... - 8/4/2015 6:36:20 PM

budh

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I agree that above 70 is worrisome. Any way you can insulate a little? On my passive cellar, I have insulated the door like it is an outside door - with weather stripping along the three sides of the wood door, and a threshold at the bottom. That and some wall and ceiling insulation. My cellar pretty much stays at 66-68 degrees year-round. Minimal fluctuation is good, and I don't mind things aging a bit faster than they would at 55 degrees. I'm also aging a bit faster than I would wish.....

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RE: Am I Damaging my wines with the 70 degree summer te... - 8/4/2015 7:18:37 PM

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It depends on the wine you are storing.
70+ is too warm for my comfort but some varieties/regions will fare better than others.

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RE: Am I Damaging my wines with the 70 degree summer te... - 8/5/2015 3:59:49 AM

gilrbo

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To all who replied saying that 70+ is worrisome, please keep in mind that the original poster said this is happening only for a short while.

Anyway, I just wanted to add this link with a similar question and an interesting reply by Bill Nanson:

http://www.burgundy-report.com/forum/topic.php?id=3740

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RE: Am I Damaging my wines with the 70 degree summer te... - 8/5/2015 5:43:39 AM

Eddie

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quote:

ORIGINAL: Blue Shorts

Most wine "experts" recommend a temperature of about 54 degrees F for storage. THe thinking is that 54 degrees is the sweet spot where the good chemical reactions are maximized while the bad chemical reactions are minimized. As the temperature increases, you get more of the "bad" chemical reactions.

I'm dubious of this assertion. The rule in chemistry is that reaction rate doubles with every 10 degree Centigrade rise in temperature, and this rate change is independent of reagents. Do you have some authoritative source for this claim (i.e., peer-reviewed biochemistry or oenology journals)?

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RE: Am I Damaging my wines with the 70 degree summer te... - 8/5/2015 7:11:14 AM

Blue Shorts

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quote:

ORIGINAL: Eddie

quote:

ORIGINAL: Blue Shorts

Most wine "experts" recommend a temperature of about 54 degrees F for storage. THe thinking is that 54 degrees is the sweet spot where the good chemical reactions are maximized while the bad chemical reactions are minimized. As the temperature increases, you get more of the "bad" chemical reactions.

I'm dubious of this assertion. The rule in chemistry is that reaction rate doubles with every 10 degree Centigrade rise in temperature, and this rate change is independent of reagents. Do you have some authoritative source for this claim (i.e., peer-reviewed biochemistry or oenology journals)?

Pleased to meet you, dubious.

I'm not sure where I originally read about the effects of temperature on wine, but I have a link here that does a decent job of explaining what I put into such laymans terms (excerpt from The Alchemist’s Wine Perspective™, Issue One, November 1996.© 1996, 1998 by Alexander J. Pandell. :

http://www.wineperspective.com/STORAGE%20TEMPERATURE%20&%20AGING.htm

Here's a paragraph from that link: But it doesn’t end there. Another concern is that higher temperatures will result in undesirable chemical reactions taking place that were either too slow or nonexistent at the lower temperatures. I think this is as important an issue as speeding up changes that have a desirable effect on the bouquet of a wine as it ages. If these undesirable reactions have HIGH barriers to reaction, which is very likely, then over a moderate aging period for a quality red wine, say 15 years at 55°F, little reaction has occurred and the wine is relatively unaffected. But, if the storage temperature is 73°F,the undesirable reactions will have occurred 8 times faster which means the same reactions have occurred in less than 2 years.

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RE: Am I Damaging my wines with the 70 degree summer te... - 8/5/2015 6:56:10 PM

champagneinhand

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I think some people have mention through anecdote that wines kept in a 54F cooler vs a passive with slow temperature movements and a bottle that was kept in a closed kitchen cabinet.

The cabinet wine after 5 or so years actually showed better.

Like S1 mentioned it has a lot to do with what kind of wine is stored and if you are really planning on holding a good amount of wine for 30 years. I most likely won't be around in 20, but certainly not 30. I think that wine is a living breathing thing for the most part. I think and chose to let my wines experience the seasons as I do myself.

Alchemists or no, I'll stick with those around me that have stored thousands of dollars in wine for up to 50 years in these same storage environments. Again actually holding bottles for 30+ years is something I have never done but I do hope that some of my 2010s are drinking well before the 20+ year mark.

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RE: Am I Damaging my wines with the 70 degree summer te... - 8/5/2015 7:14:37 PM

Stirling

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I think you are good over the medium term (up to 5 years). I keep some daily drinker wines in my basement which usually does not exceed 65 degrees. This year it is into the 70s. But I have had no bad wines from that group (so far...

).will sit for a decade and more.

But if you want to hold for up to 15 years, my guess is that you are taking on some level of risk. I have not held my wines in that passive cellar long enough to say, but that is my hunch. In other words, what I have done is bought several wine fridges as well as outside professional storage for my better wines that will sit for a decade and more.

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RE: Am I Damaging my wines with the 70 degree summer te... - 8/5/2015 9:09:35 PM

pdxwinegeek

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Thanks for the thoughts.

The wine I am hoping to age longer term is primarily Barolo, Barbaresco, Brunello and Bordeaux, some Burgundy, but all red wines.

I do have 4 Magnums of vintage Champagne from the year my oldest son was born (2002) I am hoping to preserve until his 18th birthday in 2020.

I do not have a First or even Second Growth kind of budget, so these are good, expensive wines, but not the creme de la creme.

I just got a Coravin (another post in itself I am sure), so I should be able to sample these wines through time and know when they are ready.

Being ready to drink earlier does not sound that bad to me, although I am sure it is a more complicated process than that.

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RE: Am I Damaging my wines with the 70 degree summer te... - 8/6/2015 5:03:55 PM

KPB

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PDX, just insulate a closet or corner of the cellar and install a simple A/C that you can run for the couple of weeks when it gets really hot. You will have way fewer bad bottles and the wines will evolve in a more positive way...

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RE: Am I Damaging my wines with the 70 degree summer te... - 8/8/2015 1:58:12 PM

cweiss

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quote:

ORIGINAL: dbg

I had an opportunity to do multiple side-by-side comparisons with a few cases of 1983 Prieure Lichine bought on release from the same store by my father and me, then split between us. His passive cellar with slow seasonal swings from low 60s to low 70s vs. my actively cooled cellar at 57 degrees. After 10 years, I inherited a case from him and was able to compare it to my bottles at several time points over the next 10 years. Some of these were blind comparisons and some were not. In most cases, the passively stored bottles tasted more aged and started to fade earlier than the actively stored bottles. I didn't perceive any major difference in how good they were at peak, but these weren't profound wines to begin with.

So my advice is to install a cooling system if you really value aged wines over 15 years old and plan to store them that long.

The other factor to consider is the age of the drinker-to be. Aging faster to a siimilar peak may work to the advantage of us older folks.

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RE: Am I Damaging my wines with the 70 degree summer te... - 8/9/2015 9:13:35 PM

dbg

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Excellent point. It's probably time for me to turn my cellar thermostat up a few degrees...

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RE: Am I Damaging my wines with the 70 degree summer te... - 8/10/2015 2:18:36 AM

Tanatastic

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Like others have mentioned, it really depends on the wines themselves. I had some bottles of '94 and '95 Gr Rioja that I kept in the kitchen of my M&D's place over in Southern Spain for many years, including summers where the temperatures were well in excess of 35c outside. I only had the last bottle last year, and it was still marvelous. It's possible less robust wines may have fared less well.

Maybe they would have been marvelous for much longer with more control (and I broadly agree that a consistent lower temperature will probably get more life out of your bottles) but I'm healthily sceptical that its yet another excuse from the famous (perhaps read expensive) producers as to why their bottle that cost you a years mortgage payments didn't quite live up to expectations... "ah yes, but if only you'd stored it right..."

And, having visited many wineries in France I always feel a little more at ease when I experience their cellars - they tend to be dark and humid (slightly musty!) environments, and whilst generally cooler than outside never feel cold - which echoes my own passive cellar.

My vote says you're fine, nothing to worry about.

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RE: Am I Damaging my wines with the 70 degree summer te... - 8/10/2015 5:55:41 AM

khmark7

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quote:

ORIGINAL: KPB

I'm with the others. Even 70 pushes the limits. Well above is just too hot.

I've had a lot of wine, and a few vintages of Bordeaux stored at ambient basement temp for almost 8-10 years now. Summer temps stay consistent around 68-72F, winter more around 57-65. Those wines have aged faster than their Eurocave counterparts. Ideally I am trying to reduce my inventory so that any wines stored in my ambient basement are only there for a few years, and NOT 10 years.

To further clarify, the wines appear to have aged faster, but mostly just faded.

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RE: Am I Damaging my wines with the 70 degree summer te... - 8/10/2015 10:50:25 AM

ob2s

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Here's a tip on Coravin, don't use it unless you know you will drink that bottle in less than 2 years. I have a bottle I CV'ed on 6 Aug 2013. I will open it this week. It is a wine I know well, but I would never go beyond that. My experience with CV has been mixed for long term punctures. Less than 12 months 90+%........ I keep my wine at 61-66 (winter-summer) which is good enough for me, because that is the limit of my giving a F.

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RE: Am I Damaging my wines with the 70 degree summer te... - 1/14/2020 10:20:40 AM

Daytripper

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Hi All,

Having decided to start collecting and drinking better wine I purchased my first wine cooler and have set it to 55degrees. However, upon testing with a separate thermometer/humidity detector it is showing the humidity at 50% (at one point it dropped slightly below). Should I be concerned by this as everywhere I read says it should be nearer 60-70%? I am planning on storing some wine for many years.

I bought it as upon measuring where I was keeping my wine it is was 68-70degrees so seemed too warm, so I've swapped one potential issue for another :) Also, am I okay to put my wine straight into this fridge at 55degrees, or should I reduce the temp slowly with the wine currently sitting at 68degrees outside the fridge?

Or maybe i'm over thinking things? :) any advice welcome.

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RE: Am I Damaging my wines with the 70 degree summer te... - 1/14/2020 10:23:04 AM

CranBurgundy

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quote:

ORIGINAL: Daytripper

Hi All,

Having decided to start collecting and drinking better wine I purchased my first wine cooler and have set it to 55degrees. However, upon testing with a separate thermometer/humidity detector it is showing the humidity at 50% (at one point it dropped slightly below). Should I be concerned by this as everywhere I read says it should be nearer 60-70%? I am planning on storing some wine for many years.

I bought it as upon measuring where I was keeping my wine it is was 68-70degrees so seemed too warm, so I've swapped one potential issue for another :) Also, am I okay to put my wine straight into this fridge at 55degrees, or should I reduce the temp slowly with the wine currently sitting at 68degrees outside the fridge?

Or maybe i'm over thinking things? :) any advice welcome.

Deja vu!

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RE: Am I Damaging my wines with the 70 degree summer te... - 1/14/2020 10:30:01 AM

Daytripper

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Yeah sorry, I posted the first one but it didn't show so I thought maybe as a new user I couldn't start topics so added it to an old thread, it must have just been a delay. Apologies!

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RE: Am I Damaging my wines with the 70 degree summer te... - 1/15/2020 5:08:04 PM

KPB

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Count me with those who feel that 70+ is too hot.

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RE: Am I Damaging my wines with the 70 degree summer te... - 1/16/2020 11:06:07 AM

ckinv368

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I'd be most concerned with the 20+ degree temperature swings you experience each year.

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RE: Am I Damaging my wines with the 70 degree summer te... - 1/17/2020 5:05:18 AM

lockestep

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I have noted this in prior discussions but will repeat it here: Find a copy of the Wine Spectator interview with Tim Mondavi. He allows his cellar to reach similar temperature, and states that it does not affect the wines adversely. The key is slow swings, not shocks in temperature.

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RE: Am I Damaging my wines with the 70 degree summer te... - 1/18/2020 4:07:06 PM

greenmachine

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Short answer is "yes".

My assumption is that some of your wines will be held longer term typical for BDX or similar wines. So 10-20 years. I also assume that some of your wine will end up being held much longer than you expect today.

Even if you can just get some limited cooling down there and cap it to low 60s in summer that should be fine in my opinion.

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