How does store lighting affect wine?

[dkw]

I was in the LBS the other day and came across a 2004 Voyager Chardonnay, so I stumped up the fee and brought it home. We drank it about a week later and while it was good, I'm not in a hurry to buy more (maybe this wine and my taste buds just didn't get along that night, I don't know).

This bottle was at the front of a column of later vintages, but had obviously been there quite a while, so I got to wondering whether fluoro lighting has much effect on wine over the long term? There must be a bit of chemistry going on with all those photons traversing the bottle, surely!

Cheers,

Dave.

[Roscoe]

Excellent question!
I've often wondered myself. I try and avoid buying stock that looks a bit dusty.
Has the issue been properly studied?

[Mahmoud Ali]

I'm sure that lighting, and thereby heat, has some effect on wines, particularly whites. I recently had a poorly stored 2002 Chalone Chardonnay from California. Normally it is a C$25+ wine but this bottle at C$10 was well worth the price considering the interesting if slightly maderized qualities.

If the price is right I will often take a chance on the wine provided it is for current drinking. Recently I found a few dusty old bottles of reputedly sturdy Italian reds, from the 1995, 1999 and 2001 vintages. At C$24 the price was too good to resist so I took a chance and bought them.

Cheers...............Mahmoud.

[Scanlon]

Tricky question.

Wine etc is affected by light, which is why the dark bottles are used so often.

An example I vcan think of where a clear bottle is used would be Cristal, but the light effect is overcome intentionally by the way it is packaged (yellow cellophane)

Some bottles are coated in a clear UV filter to try to negate the effects of light, but I don't know how long this coating is effective for.

I have also recently read in my search for nicer office lighting, that UV tubes emit some UV wavelengths, depending on the type of tube. The information suggests it's not enough to get 'sunburnt' under, but over time it can fade artworks and presumably other pigmented items.

i would think the handling to the store would be a bigger risk, but then again i wouldn't want to purchase any winre stored near a window.

[Gary W]

Light is bad for wine. Especially white wine and beer. I'd never buy a white wine that's been sitting in a lit fridge for too long. It modifies the flavour. The Champenois even have a name for the flavour caused by light sickness - Goût de Lumiere.
GW

[Eboracum]

A few years ago, la Revue du Vin de France did a comparative test of bottles subjected to various forms of mistreatment, e.g. -

- temperature variation
- heat
- cold
- damp cellar
- dry cellar
- light
- travel

I recall that they concluded that bright light as found in some stores is about the quickest way of spoiling a wine, particularly a white wine or champagne in a clear bottle.

[Mahmoud Ali]

Good to know. Always take the bottle from the back of the shelf or stack.

Mahmoud

[Softie]

Eboracum,

Your blood's worth bottling - obviously a good vintage.

That sounds like a reasonably scientific design. Can you recall the outcomes on travel. (The Marg River 4 doz has arrived & I don't really want to wait!)

John

[Eboracum]

[quote="Softie"] Can you recall the outcomes on travel.
John[/quote]

John, I really need to find that article; it was the light conclusion which really stuck in my mind. As far as travel was concerned, I don't remember their saying that it was bad per se. However, extreme heat and variations of same intervening during transport, as classically happens in shipment without temperature control through the Panama canal or by road during European summers, can be catastrophic.

I recall a Burgundian négociant, who travelled a lot with older wine, telling me that wine straight after transport was often OK but then it went into a shell for several weeks and longer if there was a lot of sediment. In unscientific confirmation of the first part of his claim, I can tell you that a few years ago I travelled to London for a wine dinner with a couple of great bottles from the 60s and they were received with rapture by the other diners and by myself the same evening.

I would dip into those Margaret river bottles. They are probably robust young wines and may be fine.

[dkw]

Thanks for great replies everyone, please keep adding them if you have more info.

It is interesting that strong light has a greater detriment than heat and travel.

I guess the million-dollar question is 'when does the effect become noticeable?' Hmm, maybe there's a research grant application in this after all

Cheers,

Dave.

[griff]

While light is bad I can't see how it beats heat in turning bottle contents into draino. I suspect it is a matter of degree...

cheers

Carl

[KMP]

A link to some AWRI notes on the effect of light on wine (plus other storage conditions).

Link to the abstract of one of the papers discussed above

Also a report on The Effect of Ultraviolet Light on Wine Quality funded by Waste and Resources Action Programme (WRAP) in the UK. Conclusion is essentially “The evidence gathered in this report clearly shows a simple hierarchy of effectiveness with amber glass typically able to block 90% of all harmful light whilst green and clear glasses block only 50% and 10% respectively.”

For more links just Google “effect of light on wine”. Google is good!

Mike

[Daryl Douglas]

Three bottles of wine, sitting on a wall, one a brown one, one a green one and one a clear one - then along came that bloody Humpty Dumpty and stuffed up the whole experiment when all the kings horsemen and all the kings men forgot about Humpty and just got pissed.

[Jacko]

... so I got to wondering whether fluoro lighting has much effect on wine over the long term? There must be a bit of chemistry going on with all those photons traversing the bottle, surely!....

I ponder on this myself.... especially everytime I walk past that $7000 DRC Montrachet at Dan Murphy's Willoughby store propped up for all to see......

[Daryl Douglas]

At least it means there's no requirement to wear a miner's helmet to see what you're buying - I usually avoid bottles on display if I intend to keep them for a while, go for those below.

Cheers

daz