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Cellar temperature and evolution of wine


I am 100% certain that I would know from each other
  0% (0)
Not 100% of the time, but I would nail it many more times than not
  3% (1)
It is a gamble
  21% (6)
For cellaring 10-12 years there is no difference for most wines.
  75% (21)


Total Votes : 28
(last vote on : 2/23/2024 8:06:46 PM)
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Cellar temperature and evolution of wine - 9/5/2023 8:30:52 AM   
Eduardo787

 

Posts: 1566
Joined: 1/14/2020
From: Monterrey Mexico
Status: offline 		Lets forget about tales and lets talk about what we are 100% certain. For example, humidity in my cellar is at 50% and not the recommended 70% and I have wines that have been there for 12-15 years without a single issue regarding flavor or corks. In fact, 99% of the wines I open come out with a perfect cork, 100% like new , like if it was corked yesterday. So at least for me, the humidity tale does not work. Maybe for cellaring 30 years a wine, but for 10-15 years it is a lie that you must have high humidity. Again this is my personal experience and results may vary. My question is about temperature for long term cellaring, lets say 10 years ( not 20, lets keep it simple ). If I have 2 Eurocaves or wine fridges, same model installed 1 besides the other and work exactly the same with no variation. One will be set at 56f and the other at 60. You will put in there 1 bottle of your favourite wines in each fridge and you do that with many of your fav wines. You go return back after 10 years and you open both wines when they reach the same temp. Would you know blind which bottle was stored in the 56f and the 60f fridge? Is this thing about 55 or 57f is really THAT critical or is it just that important if you are storing wine for 20 or more years ?

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Post #: 1
RE: Cellar temperature and evolution of wine - 9/5/2023 10:07:47 AM   
ChrisinCowiche

 

Posts: 7845
Joined: 12/16/2009
From: Cowiche, WA
Status: offline 		Your hypothetical is way too narrow to notice a difference, imo. A few degrees Fahrenheit is even less in Celsius. If you look at absolute scale Rankin/Kelin it's a tiny (indistinguishable) blip. A truer comparison with perhaps some difference would be comparing a passive cellar at 65 F vs a refrigerated cellar at 50 F; or a store shelve at 70-75 F vs a 50-55 F cellar. But even those are fairly minor temperature differences in the grand scheme.

My passive cellar has never had a heat damaged wine in ~12 years of storage, though I do have corks dry out, and crumble on extraction at times. Our humidity hovers around 40%, which is nice for most purposes, just not for wine corks.

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Post #: 2
RE: Cellar temperature and evolution of wine - 9/5/2023 10:19:37 AM   
Echinosum

 

Posts: 599
Joined: 1/28/2021
From: Buckinghamshire, UK
Status: offline
quote:

ORIGINAL: ChrisinCowiche
My passive cellar has never had a heat damaged wine in ~12 years of storage, though I do have corks dry out, and crumble on extraction at times. Our humidity hovers around 40%, which is nice for most purposes, just not for wine corks.

I think wine corks crumbling can be about the contents of the bottle rather than the storage conditions. It's mostly my Sauternes and other sweet wines that the corks crumble. My storage conditions definitely aren't dry. I've had to devise methods to protect the bottles against having their labels eaten by slugs and snails, or turning black with mould.

(in reply to ChrisinCowiche)
Post #: 3
RE: Cellar temperature and evolution of wine - 9/5/2023 10:47:17 AM   
davo22

 

Posts: 116
Joined: 9/6/2015
From: Prince Edward County, Ontario, Canada
Status: offline 		I agree with the other post that your temperature window difference is negligible and there is likely to be no noticeable difference (other than the one at the lower temperature may last a tiny bit longer).

In my opinion, large fluctuation in temperature or humidity over a short period of time (e.g., every day) are the real killers for wine storage. As long as you have wine stored in a dark place at a sensible cool temperature and in a damper part of your house, things are going to be ok for a few years. But if stored in a spot where the temperature is swinging 5C and 10-20% within a day, you're probably going to have some issues. The counter to that is that I think a cellar can swing gradually by those kinds of temperature/humidity envelopes over a couple seasons with minimal impact (e.g., cellar is 14C in mid summer gradually dropping to 9C in mid winter).

I do think staying in the vicinity of recommended temperature gives you a lot more predictability on your aging windows. I significantly upgraded my cellar when I last moved, and now have a very consistent temperature (12C) and higher humidity (80%) than I did previously, and I am finding my recorded drinking windows are hitting optimal bottle opening more often than they did previously. But that's just my experience.

After having cellared now in 3 different homes, I just think a lot of it is about figuring out your own environment and what it does to your wines and how they age (vs. how the books/publications/producers/CT tell you they should be aging).

Cheers,
Dave

(in reply to Echinosum)
Post #: 4
RE: Cellar temperature and evolution of wine - 9/5/2023 12:29:58 PM   
grafstrb

 

Posts: 8834
Joined: 11/6/2007
From: LAla land
Status: offline 		Too many other factors at play for ANYone to be able to consistently identify differences *due to storage temp.*, let alone identify which bottle was stored at which temperature.

I think long-term storage at 60degrees is completely fine, unless your consumption rate dictates a colder temperature in order to make your holdings last longer (and I'm thinking that colder temperature more around 50 degrees, as opposed to 56). --- part of the "magic" of the cellar at Bern's restaurant is the fact that they keep their temperature in the high forties.

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Post #: 5
RE: Cellar temperature and evolution of wine - 9/5/2023 1:17:41 PM   
KPB

 

Posts: 4653
Joined: 11/25/2012
From: Ithaca, New York
Status: offline 		I’m in the “probably no difference” group, because 60 is still pretty reasonable. At 75, I think differences usually would be noticeable.

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Post #: 6
RE: Cellar temperature and evolution of wine - 9/5/2023 1:35:31 PM   
wadcorp

 

Posts: 9332
Joined: 10/29/2008
From: Kansas City, MO
Status: offline
quote:

ORIGINAL: davo22

In my opinion, large fluctuation in temperature or humidity over a short period of time (e.g., every day) are the real killers for wine storage.


This.

Our old house had a below-ground passive cellar. The temperatures were very slow to change & we never noticed any undo impact.

.

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Post #: 7
RE: Cellar temperature and evolution of wine - 9/5/2023 2:16:36 PM   
Wine Grove

 

Posts: 714
Joined: 11/9/2017
From: San Clemente, CA
Status: offline
quote:

ORIGINAL: grafstrb
part of the "magic" of the cellar at Bern's restaurant is the fact that they keep their temperature in the high forties.


THIS is an interesting tid bit

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Post #: 8
RE: Cellar temperature and evolution of wine - 9/6/2023 5:33:53 AM   
KPB

 

Posts: 4653
Joined: 11/25/2012
From: Ithaca, New York
Status: offline 		Ok, a story : I once had my wine in my Mom and Dad’s cellar. Their house had one corner where the exterior concrete of the cellar wall was exposed to sun, but only at certain times of the year — trees and stuff normally would shade that spot. They lived new New York City, and this is not a hot climate area of the US. And mostly even on sunny days that wall was in deep shade. We used to sit near that area on hot days to cool off, actually.

Still, over a year there might be one or two days when due to the angle of the sun, etc, etc, it hit that spot on that wall. On those days, for a few hours, that wall got toasty on the exterior. But it was a thick wall, so the inside would heat way more slowly. On those days mostly the interior of the wine area never went above 70 but anything against that spot in that wall maybe would reach 75. Plus it was pretty dry.

Short term wines were fine. But I also had a few bottles of really good stuff that I was planning to keep longer. This particular cellar setup destroyed those bottles. All dead.

< Message edited by KPB -- 9/6/2023 6:40:13 AM >

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Post #: 9
RE: Cellar temperature and evolution of wine - 9/6/2023 9:37:08 PM   
hankj

 

Posts: 4672
Joined: 6/26/2008
From: Seattle, WA
Status: offline 		Regarding corks, when you store a wine bottle on its side, the cork is literally touching liquid that is mostly water. So if the air on the other side of the cork is a bit dry, that should not make a difference, given that the cork is soaking against water on the other end.

Regarding 60° f passive storage, that is quite remarkable passive storage, approaching the quality of a deep underground cave in Europe. I have found that even in a cooler place like Seattle, it's hard to do passive storage that doesn't get up into the high 60s in the summertime, at least some of the time. Congratulations if you have a passive cellar that doesn't go above 60° Fahrenheit - you have got absolutely nothing to worry about.

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(in reply to KPB)
Post #: 10
RE: Cellar temperature and evolution of wine - 9/8/2023 8:18:18 AM   
sastewart

 

Posts: 593
Joined: 8/16/2012
From: Greater Nashville
Status: offline
quote:

ORIGINAL: KPB

I’m in the “probably no difference” group, because 60 is still pretty reasonable. At 75, I think differences usually would be noticeable.


I agree with Ken in general. I would not worry about keeping wine at 60, although I believe there is a faster aging curve the higher the temp. 25 years ago I kept wine in a below ground passive cellar that varied from 60ish to 65 for a short period in summer and those wines were sound but the aging curve was noticeably shorter. I wouldn't keep any wines at 75 except perhaps daily drinkers for current consumption.

Humidity in the 50 - 70 percent range is fine I believe. Even assuming you keep bottles on their side as you get lower humidity more corks break (often within the 3/8s of an inch closest to the bottom). If I lived in Arizona I would use a Durand for any bottle older than 10 years.


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Post #: 11
RE: Cellar temperature and evolution of wine - 9/8/2023 12:27:30 PM   
ChrisinCowiche

 

Posts: 7845
Joined: 12/16/2009
From: Cowiche, WA
Status: offline
quote:

ORIGINAL: hankj

Regarding corks, when you store a wine bottle on its side, the cork is literally touching liquid that is mostly water. So if the air on the other side of the cork is a bit dry, that should not make a difference, given that the cork is soaking against water on the other end.

All of my bottles are stored sideways with constant liquid. The crumble rate is high on composite corks; less so on natural corks, and also less so when the cork is more penetrated with wine. Wines with the "best sealing" cork are often the driest. The wines are always fine, I just decant through a screen if I have to push the cork in.

In related news, a local restaurant in Tieton called Nomad that we frequent actually bought a Durant to use when we (and others of course) bring crumbly corks in. Yes, we live in a town of <1000 people so the restaurant knows us and caters to our wine habit. They have a nice wine list, but know we bring in aged stuff.

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Post #: 12
RE: Cellar temperature and evolution of wine - 9/8/2023 1:03:45 PM   
CranBurgundy

 

Posts: 8272
Joined: 1/5/2016
From: Philly / South Joizey
Status: offline 		Somebody who knows wine better than any of us once told me that storing hearty reds (tannic wine like Port, Cabernet Sauvignon, Bordeaux) is perfectly fine between 60˚F to 65˚F, and still okay up to 70˚F for very short periods. Whites need cooler storage, somewhere between 48˚F to 58˚F. Burgundy falls between the two - despite being a red wine, it should be stored slightly cooler between 55˚F to 59˚F. The issue with temperature is that the bad reactions in wine happen faster than the good reactions, and as the temperature rises the gap in the speed of reactions widens. The lower the temperature, the slower the bad reactions happen, but the good reactions can still progress at a decent rate because they aren't as affected by cooler storage. I'm vastly oversimplifying the lesson he gave me for brevity's sake.... and quite frankly I don't remember all the details. The moral of the story is to stay in side the safe range for the type of wine you're aging. Remember that you can also store wine at too low a temperature, where nothing happens to help aging. That's why people don't just load up a regular refrigerator with bottles.

EDIT: or, if in doubt, just send your wine to me. I have a semi-passive cellar (I have an HVAC vent that I open in the summer for extra cooling) that stays 57˚F - 64˚F with slow variations. For more particular temperature management, there are 4 Danby fridges that run at 54˚F, 2 @ 56˚F, and 58˚F. The storage fee depends on how much in quantity and cost per bottle.

< Message edited by CranBurgundy -- 9/8/2023 2:28:01 PM >

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Post #: 13
RE: Cellar temperature and evolution of wine - 9/8/2023 1:05:29 PM   
ChrisinCowiche

 

Posts: 7845
Joined: 12/16/2009
From: Cowiche, WA
Status: offline
quote:

ORIGINAL: CranBurgundy
That's why people don't just load up a regular refrigerator with bottles.
Except in SW Florida.

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Post #: 14
RE: Cellar temperature and evolution of wine - 9/8/2023 1:45:34 PM   
Blue Shorts

 

Posts: 2779
Joined: 2/5/2008
From: Santa Cruz
Status: offline 		I don't believe that I would know the difference between wines stored at >70F or more in the short term. And in the long term, I don't believe that I would know the difference between it being properly stored, but too old, or just improperly stored.

I can detect obvious flaws in wines.....oxidation, TCA, etc, but the rest is a huge grey area.

Since I keep my wines at what is considered optimal temps....54-56 degrees F, I assume that any flaw is due to the wine itself. If I drank a wine at a restaurant or with unknown provenance and the wine was off, I would not be able to tell if it was improperly stored or was just an "off" bottle, unless I was familiar with the particular wine.

I'm impressed by those that can tell the difference.

< Message edited by Blue Shorts -- 9/8/2023 1:46:19 PM >

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Post #: 15
RE: Cellar temperature and evolution of wine - 2/21/2024 12:36:52 PM   
mutwonmax

 

Posts: 27
Joined: 1/27/2024
Status: offline 		Some advice please. I have a passive wine cellar. Humidity is between 50 to 80 from winter to summer, which seems fine to me. So far (over the past 8 years) Ive had no problems with my corks. Temperature does not change by much during the day but varies through the year. In winter its at 55/ 13 Fahrenheit/Celcius and in Summer it used climb up to 66/18.5 (peaks only for 1-2 weeks), which seemed fine to me too so far... Last year I noticed a peak in summer of 68/20 (again 1-2 weeks) and it got me thinking about active cooling.

First of all: how worried would you be about my summer temperatures and especially the latest peak?

Second: I ve considered active cooling which comes at an affordable prize of perhaps 1500 Euros (similar in $). However Im not keen on spending this amount and its quite a hustle to get it installed. (Id have a split airconditioner installed, which would reduce humidity in summer as a side benefit i guess.

As an alternative I could try to vent cool air during the summer nights into the cellar and thus hopefully keep the peaks below 65/18 Fahrenheit Celcius.

What would you opt for?


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Post #: 16
RE: Cellar temperature and evolution of wine - 2/21/2024 12:54:43 PM   
DoubleD1969

 

Posts: 3596
Joined: 8/19/2008
From: New Jersey
Status: offline 		@mutwonmax
From what you describe, the wines should be fine. Thermal mass, especially if the bottles are stored tightly together, will keep the temperature somewhere in the middle of that range.

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Post #: 17
RE: Cellar temperature and evolution of wine - 2/21/2024 1:17:53 PM   
jmcmchi

 

Posts: 3213
Joined: 8/6/2013
Status: offline
quote:

ORIGINAL: DoubleD1969

@mutwonmax
From what you describe, the wines should be fine. Thermal mass, especially if the bottles are stored tightly together, will keep the temperature somewhere in the middle of that range.


Agreed, not an issue, you have a couple of degrees to go before even considering anything

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Post #: 18
RE: Cellar temperature and evolution of wine - 2/21/2024 3:59:01 PM   
Blue Shorts

 

Posts: 2779
Joined: 2/5/2008
From: Santa Cruz
Status: offline 		Eduardo: I would choose "none of the above" in your poll, if it existed

I always keep my wine stored at the recommended temperature and humidity. I have no idea how long wines last or how much they are affected by altering the temp/humidity.

(in reply to Eduardo787)
Post #: 19
RE: Cellar temperature and evolution of wine - 2/21/2024 5:57:26 PM   
WineGuyCO

 

Posts: 3802
Joined: 9/5/2017
From: Living at 7200 ft. in Monument CO
Status: offline
quote:

ORIGINAL: Blue Shorts

Eduardo: I would choose "none of the above" in your poll, if it existed

I always keep my wine stored at the recommended temperature and humidity. I have no idea how long wines last or how much they are affected by altering the temp/humidity.


This ^^^^^^^

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Post #: 20
RE: Cellar temperature and evolution of wine - 2/22/2024 12:24:05 AM   
mutwonmax

 

Posts: 27
Joined: 1/27/2024
Status: offline 		Hi Eduardo,

I would vote option 4 , "no difference for most wines"! however I didnt vote in your poll, because, as I understand, you ask for certainty and Im not certain at all.. it's just my assumption.
If there were a recordable difference in your experiment, I wouldn't be surprised either, but I definately wouldn't trust myself to taste it blindly, let alone with much certainty.

On a side note: Having re-read my first comment above "Some advice please...", it feels a bit like hijacking your thread. Sorry about that - I hadn't thought of it when I wrote it.

< Message edited by mutwonmax -- 2/22/2024 12:36:54 AM >

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Post #: 21
RE: Cellar temperature and evolution of wine - 2/22/2024 9:21:04 AM   
Eduardo787

 

Posts: 1566
Joined: 1/14/2020
From: Monterrey Mexico
Status: offline
quote:

ORIGINAL: mutwonmax

Hi Eduardo,



On a side note: Having re-read my first comment above "Some advice please...", it feels a bit like hijacking your thread. Sorry about that - I hadn't thought of it when I wrote it.


Hmmm, this will not be oversaught, you need to fix this buying me a large beer whenever I visit your city . Dont worry at all, I am the illegitimate son of Andy Kaufman, so I am definitely not sane ( and to be honest, I see sane people WAY crazier than me, so....)

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Post #: 22
RE: Cellar temperature and evolution of wine - 2/22/2024 11:14:36 AM   
mutwonmax

 

Posts: 27
Joined: 1/27/2024
Status: offline
quote:

ORIGINAL: Eduardo787



Hmmm, this will not be oversaught, you need to fix this buying me a large beer whenever I visit your city . Dont worry at all, I am the illegitimate son of Andy Kaufman, so I am definitely not sane ( and to be honest, I see sane people WAY crazier than me, so....)


To such generousity and wisdom I can do nothing but raise my glass and drink up! Cheerio :-)

(in reply to Eduardo787)
Post #: 23
RE: Cellar temperature and evolution of wine - 2/22/2024 11:48:48 AM   
wicozani

 

Posts: 275
Joined: 8/15/2009
Status: offline 		Our cellar is also passive (though we have an overhead 10-inch air run if we need a split air system [if we decide to get really serious]). It ranges from 40-75 humidity and over 10 years ranges from 54 to 64 degrees (at height of summer). These are ambient air readings; the juice in the bottles will be between these measurements. We have lots of red Bordeaux, including multiple bottles (not cases) of First Growths, and they've all stayed in great condition and have tasted great. As long as we stay within these ranges (and are not cellaring high price cases for investment purposes) we are not compelled to change.

< Message edited by wicozani -- 2/22/2024 11:49:53 AM >

(in reply to mutwonmax)
Post #: 24
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