Cellar temperatures and storage

[Ratcatcher]

Yes this hoary old chestnut again.

I admit I have pinched the topic from another forum but I like the discussions here better.

I have a passive cellar in sunny Hobart under the house on the south side. The walls get absolutely zero sun. No insulation and a few holes in the bricks lets some external air in.

I have been storing wine there for 4-5 years and only just got a temperature gauge that measured highs and lows.

Since mid Feb temps have ranged from 15 - 18 and humidity 55 - 70%.

We've had one hot day over 30 degrees in that time and on that day the temp down there got to 20.

My query is: we only get 4-5 days of 30 and above each Summer and it appears that on those days my cellar temp may get to 20 for maybe 3-4 hours. All my bottles are boxed up in cardboard. When the temperature outside the boxes rises 2-3 degrees in a 24 hour period how much could the temperature of the wine change through the boxes and the glass of the bottle? Surely 1 degree at most? (Obviously different if the air temp stayed up for 48 hours or so but not for 6-12 hours surely?) Surely this won't drastically affect the condition of my wine?

I don't care if a wine I store for 10 years tastes like a perfectly stored bottle would taste at 12 years but I care if a 5 year old bottle tastes like a 20 year old bottle.

Any thoughts.

[Davo]

I would have thought that you could store it in the attic in Hobart and it still wouldn't get over 10 deg

[Bill]

Sounds ok to me, particularly if you're not cellaring for much past 10 years or so. Repacking in to polystyrene boxes would help insulate and reduce the bottle temperature variations even more if you could do that.


Bill

[TORB]

Ratty,

I would not worry about it. If the cellar air temp gets up to 20 for a few hours, the bottles will not be at that temperature. It takes a lot longer for a mass of bottles, especially if they are in styro boxes or even in their cardboard boxes to heat up.

Daily fluctuations of the wine itself is the biggest potential problem. The best way to measure that is to get an inside/outside temp guage with a waterproof probe; pets shops can get them. Seal the proble in a bottle of water and place it in a typical part of the cellar and then you can see how the liquid temperature is going.

[Red Bigot]

Ratty,

Don't worry, your cellaring conditions are fine. I've had many 10 and more yo reds from Canberra under-house passive cellars that have probably had greater fluctuations in temp than yours (we get a lot of high-30's for weeks on end sometimes and down to -7 or less over winter) and there have been no disappointments that point to cellaring problems.

[Finney]

Yes, I can second what Brian is saying. Having lived in Canberra for almost 30yrs and drunk wine from many under a house cellar, the wines have failed to dissappoint.

I just wish the house we live in wasn't a concrete slab, trouble was that when we bought it everything worked. Anyways will have my new cellar up and running by spring.

Finney (Craig)

[grahamg]

I'm in the same position as you Ratty, except living in Sydney is much worse. A temperature guage on wine I've got under the house has shown around 22 - 23 degrees over this summer. Because of this I haven't bought anything too expensive and plan to drink within 5 - 8 years. I recently put some bottles in polystyrene boxes. With the lids on I found the humidity went from 75% up to 99%. Not sure what to do about this so now the lids are half off.
Anyway it sounds like you will get good results from your passive cellar.
Graham

[GraemeG]

I have a passive cellar in sunny Hobart under the house on the south side. The walls get absolutely zero sun. No insulation and a few holes in the bricks lets some external air in.

I have been storing wine there for 4-5 years and only just got a temperature gauge that measured highs and lows.

Since mid Feb temps have ranged from 15 - 18 and humidity 55 - 70%.

We've had one hot day over 30 degrees in that time and on that day the temp down there got to 20.

No problems at all. In the last 15 months I've drunk 3 'forgotton' bottles of 91 Piper's Brook Riesling from my father-in-law's passive Opossum Bay cellar. All three have been utterly stunning.

So long as your cellar stays above 10C in winter you'll be fine - a slow creep of 8C over twelve months is surely no cause for concern.

cheers,
Graeme

[Gianna]

Ratty,
my cellar conditions are very similar, fully undergroud, virtually in the middle of the house, so no external walls or sunlight and a few vented bricks.

So far, I have not had any dissapointments with my wine, but I have decided this month to insulate the roof of the cellar with some polyester batts to help stabalise the temparature a little. I don't think it is the external weather as much as the ducted air-con and heating shutes that are near the edge of the walls.
I am sure these alter the temp more than anything else, especially in winter with the ducted heating going all day.

[Ratcatcher]

Thanks for the reassurance everyone. And for the pi$$take Davo!! It's a lovely balmy 21 and beautiful today as I write this. BTW - anyone coming to Tassie should come in April/March - by far the loveliest time of year. Maybe Ric could do a Tassie Tour Diary? Not many suitable wines here for you and Brian though.

I'm not looking at cellaring for 25-30 years so it sounds like I'll do OK. I might keep a couple of odd bottles for 20+ years just for an exeriment.

I might just try some cheap measures on the few really hot days we get just to try and reduce the temp 1-2 degrees and will monitor temps in Winter for the first time this year.

GraemeG, I'm with you on the Pipers Brook Riesling, we had a bottle of the 97 which wasn't meant to be a great vintage and it really was stunning. It was bottled under cork and stored in my passive cellar and flown with us up to Brisbane to drink with some ex-Pat Taswegians so I was not holding out great expectations but it was marvellous.

[Ian S]

Tysons cellaring book at $10 may be a useful investment, even if you don't get into the DIY fun he describes. For me it was probably worth it for the "Towel as a wick" method of increasing humidity. He also covers a number of times empirical evidence of inside/outside bottle differences.