A tale of two wines

[Luke W]

In 2005 I bought a six pack of 1997 Redbank Sally's Paddock (not a great year for this classic). I tried one and was not impressed and took another to a dinner party where I gave it to a mate. My mate has generally poor cellaring conditions - wines kept under his house i.e, high set house with open breezeway - 20-30 degrees in summer and 10-25 in winter. My cellar is a constant 16 degrees (no light or vibration).

Now here's the thing....

Six years later we go to a restaurant and by design take a bottle of the 1997 Sallys Paddock (my last and the one I gave him in 2005). Both are magnificent and indistinguishable from each other. Bugger me dead! Is this just a fluke or are bottles of wine able to cope with much greater variations in cellaring than we imagine. Am I wasting huge amounts of electricity when my wines could possibly travel OK without the constant temp/humidity/no vibration?

Has anyone on the forum got really poor cellaring and still have good results with their wines or bought and tried any of those "heat affected" wines sold by Langtons last year?

Comments anyone?

Cheers

Luke

[Moredsir]

I have been unable to find anything but anecdotal evidence that storing wine in cool, dark, and no vibration conditions is best. ie. we are certain of those conditions historically.

I did find a very simple test that suggested wine is affected by light and vibration, but it was a very basic test and not very scientific, and more aimed at shops than cellars.

I suspect the are no definitive scientific studies on factors affecting storage of wine, especially under screwcap.

[rens]

Ok Luke, I've been looking for an excuse to crack my experimental bottles. One kept in the Garage and the other in my cellar over the last 12 months. I'll open them tonight and provide you with feedback.
Rens

[Roscoe]

I have long been of the opinion that strict temperature control is unnecessary because I have only ever had a passive cellar, and for every wine that I have opened too late (too developed), I seem to drink at least a hundred that are either too young or "in the zone". So for me, strict temperature control would be just wasted money (and more CO2 in the atmosphere). I choose to drink them when I think they are likely to be ready (using my nous), using the experience of others (like this forum) and advice from the usual suspects e.g. Jeremy Oliver and in the past, the Gold book. I have cellared bottles for up to 23 years with excellent results. If temperature control slows down the process of ageing, I definitely don't want it
I don't think there are any scientifically rigorous studies that can guide us.
P.S. My cellar reaches a maximum of around 25-26 on the hottest day in summer to about 10-11 on the coldest night in mid-winter. Diurnal changes are quite small. I have stopped using a max/min thermometer because I could see no point. It wasn't going to change my practice.

[Luke W]

Interesting observations - look forward to what u find Rens.

Until 2003 I just kept my 300 or so bottles of wine in the coolest part of the house without ever remembering any going off. In those days I thought Brett was just something that gave Hunter reds their sweaty saddle and most of my reds were turned over within a 10 year period. I don't even remember too many lousy corks and TCA.

The downside of owning a cellar is that u fill it up in no time (now 1500 bottles) and it costs a load to buy and operate. The other downside is that if the electricity goes off u panic and think that its the end of the world. Amazing isn't it that some insurance companies have paid out if the wine has gone over 30 degrees (particularly if in reality this doesn't really harm the wine).

I remember an episode of Colombo from the 70's where a winemaker had murdered someone and turned off the airconditioner. He ends up pouring all the wine out and Colombo asks him why - he says that if the wine in the bottle stays at 42 degrees (or 100 F) for more than 20 minutes then it kills the wine. Off course I've always thought that this was gospel and would be interested by any feedback from one of our erstwhile scientists to validate (or not) this point.

I have a friend who kept his wine in a tin shed in the backyard of his house in Charters Towers. I doubt that he had more than a few dozen at any time but he said that he never had any that went off (I imagine the ambient temperature would have stayed above 30 degrees in summer and would often have been 40.

Roscoe - that's exactly the way that I kept my cellar in the old days and some of those wines I open even now (from the pre cellar days) and don't notice any spoilage.

More thoughts?

[fatdoi]

I find it as long as you don't boil those poor buggers & stored in OK environment, good quality wines like yours should hold up quite well as Aussie wines of shiraz, cab sav tend to be quite robust.

[Brucer]

I think it was a fluke. I did the same with a 96 Penfolds 389. A friend stored her 6 pack under her house in Sydney, and I stored mine at 16 degrees. They were stored for around 10 years.
We tasted one of each one night, and hers was cooked and crap, and mine was terrific.
Bruce

[TiggerK]

I'm with Brucer and fatdoi on this one. While I can't point to any specific proof, I'm confident (from previous research on storing wine) that keeping wine for medium/long term at sustained high temperatures (say 25+) will first accelerate the development, and secondly result in a poor flavour profile vs the same wine kept at a cooler temperature. Basically the higher the temp and the longer it's kept there, the more certain you can be of ruining it, or at least changing it from what it should ideally taste like. (Doesn't mean it'll be undrinkable, just not what it could have been). Keeping it under the house is fine for many people, and why not (other than in more tropical areas), most avg temps under a house in winter might be 15, and in summer maybe 25, I wouldn't say that was ruinous conditions for wine, but I'm sure it would be happier and much more likely to taste as it was intended if the temps are kept steadily around 14-18.

Of course too cold and development will slow to a glacial crawl.

On the other hand Brucer, we all know the bottle variation to be found on Penfolds 389 1996......

Cheers
Tim

[Peter Schlesinger]

While I'm pretty much with Roscoe on this, if I had the space and resources I'd almost certainly default to a temperature controlled cellar. As I've said in previous posts, my wines are stored under the house at the south end of a low to the ground N-S configured house. It's served me well. The only problems I've ever encountered over 30+ years of storage are cork taint and brett. However, and I know it's a conceit, I'd like some of the wines I've bought as long term keepers to live on and develop over the life of my children after my eventual wake (and they do not mind a red or two either). Which introduces the element of more rigour in the storeage equation. So temperature control for me is the gold standard but I'll accept cruising along with what has worked over all of these years. Oh and Roscoe, if temperature control slows down the ageing process, I'm inclined to chill out a bit more than I currently do.

Cheers, Peter

[Michael McNally]

I remember an episode of Colombo from the 70's where a winemaker had murdered someone and turned off the airconditioner. He ends up pouring all the wine out and Colombo asks him why - he says that if the wine in the bottle stays at 42 degrees (or 100 F) for more than 20 minutes then it kills the wine. Off course I've always thought that this was gospel and would be interested by any feedback from one of our erstwhile scientists to validate (or not) this point.

Yeah, the background research on that show was out of control good.

There was a similar episode on Barnaby Jones where a sommelier was killed for serving Sauvignon Blanc with chicken. Corkscrew through the eyeball to make it look like a decanting accident. Left me scarred I tells ya.... but I digress.

For almost 15 years I used a heavy wooden cupboard under my house where the temperature I am sure would have hit 35 degrees on the hottest summer days (Brisbane) and 5 or 6 degrees on the coldest nights in winter. I don't think I have cracked too many bottles and thought "that's a little stewed". Still, I mainly cellar stuff around or under the $30 mark, and almost exclusively screwcaps, so maybe those are factors. I also tend to drink stuff within 6-10 years of purchase so that probably helps.

My experience is that wine is tougher than many people think and that warmer temperatures are okay, though radical variations obviously wouldn't be good for corks, what with the expansion/contraction factor.

All that said, I have recently put a temperature controlled cellar into my house as part of our renovations and I couldn't be happier. I used to worry about my wine when it was really hot in summer. Now I can rest easy.

At the moment it is a constant 16 degrees. Once the novelty has worn off (and I get a data logger so I know what is actually going on) I suspect I will raise the temperature so that it sits in a band of 18-20 degrees and leave it at that. I will most likely switch the aircon off altogether in a month or so anyway for winter.

Cheers

Michael

[Brucer]

I am a Columbo fan, and the winery was called Carsini, and the actor was Donald Pleasance, who was also in the Australian classic, Wake In Fright.

[rens]

Background:
On March 1st 2010 I decided to conduct an experiment to see how heat effected a wine. I had minimal experience with heat effected wines and I believed the differences would be subtle. I thought I would not be able to pick a heat effected wine presented to me without comparison to a non heat effected wine.
Method:
In order to use up my credit card points I exchanged them for some cellarmaster plonk. Two bottles that came in the case were labelled ‘Pasut extremely funky dry red’. The back label read ‘Fruit grown by the Pasut family at sunny cliffs and made by Kathleen Quealy. Contains sulphites 11.5% Vol. 62 Bittern-Dromana Road Balnarring Vic 3926’.
These two bottles were chosen for the experiment. On the 1st of March 2010 one was placed in the garage, the other into the Vintec V30 sg “e”. A thermometer was placed in the garage to measure the maximum and minimum temperature of the garage over the test period. The garage bottle had been stored upright and the Vintec bottle had been stored lying down.
Results:
The appearance of the bottles did not differ greatly (see pictures). The one from the garage did however have dust, cob webs and grass clippings on the outside. The fill levels were identical. The temperature of the Vintec was a constant 16 degrees Celsius. The temperature of the garage fluctuated between 9 degrees in the winter to 41 degrees in the summer (see picture).
The wines were opened on 7th April 2011. Visually there was no discernible difference between the two wines (see picture). Light red with a clear rim at the glass edge.
Vintec bottle: A nose of raspberry and red fruits with some alcohol detectable. The palate was medium to light weight mirroring the nose with lifting acid and fine tannins on the shortish finish.
Garage bottle: The nose is way more developed with little to no fruit to speak of. It reminds me a little of a 20 year old South Australian Shiraz Cabernet blend with old leather and earth thrown in. The palate is thin and close to dry dusty earth with the acid sticking out a way. It has a very short drying finish. There was no vibrancy to it at all.
Discussion:
I chose the two cellarmaster wines because they were in-expensive and pretty ordinary wines-worthy of a clean skin really. I thought if you could pick faults it would be way easier with a poorly structured wine. They did not let me down. I think the garage version retained the underlying structure of the wine (as poor as it was) but evolved 5-6 years ahead of the vintec version. As a result all the faults of the wine were amplified. Although I would not ordinarily describe the vintec bottle as having vibrancy, in comparison to the garage version it had a lot.
I think (and this is just my opinion based on two bottles) having bigger reds that do not experience large temperature variations may result in small largely undetectable changes. Having lighter style reds with large temperature fluctuations on a daily basis will result in premature aging and amplification of pre-existing structural flaws.

Oh and some pictures too:

[Luke W]

Thanks Rens

I guess I'll keep the aircon going in the cellar!