The Auswine Forum

After reading the Langton's thread and the issue of heat affected wines hitting auctions I'm interested in knowing how forumites store their wine.

Mine are stored in a passive underground bunker typical in old houses in Adelaide. Not the perfect system but it seems to work. It eliminates daily temperature fluctuations with the annual variation from around 13C in winter to 20C at the height of summer. This can lead to slightly more rapid ageing time but this has not been a major problem.

Carl

Passive underground cellar with the same temp parameters as Carl. 14-15 in winter up to 20 in summer.
Humidity around the 60-70% mark.
Active/refrigerated storage upstairs in the from of a 110 bottle vintec.
I've tried to split some vintages I have mulitples of between the two setups so i can conduct an ageing experiment in the future.
I have a small bucket of water in the cellar to help with humidity.
I fill it once every 2-3 months. Surprising how quickly the level drops.
Often dip my finger in it and test the temp.

I think perhaps whites and light reds in the upstairs setup and the heavy hitting reds downstairs.
Ultimately that's what im aiming for.

I'm currently cellaring 10 cases of air in Wine Ark while my wine sits at home waiting to go to storage (just as well it's a cool weekend in Brisbane...).

Most of it was contained within two ~40 bottle wine cabinets until the 'good' one died. The surviving 'dodgy' one will house short term and wine for the coming year until it's kaput and I'll probably replace it with something similar.

My passive make shift cellar at basement has temp range from 14℃ in winter to 18 ℃ in summer, with daily fluctuation within 1℃. Humidity also fluctuates between mid 30% in winter to 60% in summer. I don't have a bucket of water to keep humidity higher. I was worried the dry air would ruin the corks but I have had maybe 1 out of a 1000 chance to have dried up cork.

Passive underground- 17c in winter up to 22/3c in summer. Not perfect but no issues noted.
2x wine fridges.

Professional storage since early 90's.

Wine fridge x 2 big Transtherm's in Hong Kong.

I’m storing my better stuff in Liebherr’s; one for whites and bubbles, and one for reds. The rest sits around the house on racks and in boxes - that either won’t fit in the fridges, or I don’t care enough about to warrant them getting better storage. I’m working my way through those, and haven’t really encountered any heat affected or otherwise out of condition wines. I might be skating on thin ice with a few bits and pieces, but tbh I’m not too worried. The fridge stuff are my treasures.

Professional storage in Sydney and London, and 3 wine fridges at home

Wine fridge plus passive storage in a dedicated room. Like a few others, passive storage ranges from 15 to 20 degrees here in SA.

Most is offsite at Kennards in climate control storage.

I've also got a wine fridge at home.
I use this for drink now wine and purchases before they go offsite.

Cheers Con.

3 x large wine fridges

Con J wrote:Most is offsite at Kennards in climate control storage.

I've also got a wine fridge at home.
I use this for drink now wine and purchases before they go offsite.

Cheers Con.

This is pretty much the same as me. Con, which Kennards do you use? I’m at the Chatswood one. A year or two ago I found out a forum member here had the locker next to mine.

After moving around alot due to work and not having a permanent home for 35 years, I finally built a custom designed climate controlled cellar at the back of my garage (which is below grade) nearly 3 years ago. This was my retirement gift to myself, fully endorsed by my wife too. It was not cheap but I am very happy with it.

I keep it at 15deg year round. It is wonderful to able to see all your wine in racks and readily accessable at all times.

Hacker wrote:

Con J wrote:Most is offsite at Kennards in climate control storage.

I've also got a wine fridge at home.
I use this for drink now wine and purchases before they go offsite.

Cheers Con.

This is pretty much the same as me. Con, which Kennards do you use? I’m at the Chatswood one. A year or two ago I found out a forum member here had the locker next to mine.

I'm at Port Melbourne, been there for over 15 years.

Cheers Con.

Cellar split between the UK (BBR & LCB) and Wine Ark over here.

Cellar construction in progress - started a couple of weeks ago, aiming to insulate a crawl-space with capacity for around 1,000 bottles , and eventually install a proper conditioning unit. Current temps down there seem to hold very stable from 18-20 degrees since I've been measuring (about 8 weeks), and humidity around 75-80%. Survived the temperature on Sunday fairly well, but will be interesting to see how we go over the summer when we have longer periods of high heat outside.

Hope is that, once insulated, it should be sufficient to start using right away.

In the spirit of the old Paul Young hit its , “where ever I lay my hat, that’s my home” . So
- professional storage with C&B in the UK (stored 2 different physical locations)
- Eurocave in Melbourne. Once upon a time I had 3 fridges, but the more I have, the more I collect, so this helps keep things under control.
- passive cellar in Scotland. Quite dry, but the biggest problem there seems to be that it ages slower Than expected
- passive cellar in Belgium. Very high humidity - dumped some wine there in Jan and by Oct a lot of the labels were falling off
- temperature controlled loft ‘cellar’ I’m Amsterdam. Kept constantly at 15 degrees. Great for storing high end burgs, but the threat is always there that my mate will drink them by mistake
- a fridge in Wagga Wagga that is set to the max(so 8-10 degrees). Try to only keep screw caps there, but my mother in law keeps a cup of water just inside the door and tops it up regularly.

When we decided to build in underneath of our 1940s Queenslander, I just marked a little room space with "cellar" on the first draft drawing and it stayed there. The location moved around, and the space got bigger and smaller, but it stayed there! I lost about 20cm width during the build as the architect had underestimated the space required for the front door. I still ended up with a 3m x 1.6m space. It is heavily insulated with aircon that sits at 15 degrees all year round. My happy place. Cost next to nothing as a part of the renovations......

Cheers

Michael

I store all my wine offsite at Kennards climate controlled, excluding house quaffers which stay downstairs under our worker’s cottage.

We’re going to build in underneath our house next year, and I have set aside a spot against the slope, on the southern side of the building, for a small cellar. I am still not sure, however, that this is the best way to go as there will be full exposure as to the extent of the wine collection....

Con J wrote:

Hacker wrote:

Con J wrote:Most is offsite at Kennards in climate control storage.

I've also got a wine fridge at home.
I use this for drink now wine and purchases before they go offsite.

Cheers Con.

This is pretty much the same as me. Con, which Kennards do you use? I’m at the Chatswood one. A year or two ago I found out a forum member here had the locker next to mine.

I'm at Port Melbourne, been there for over 15 years.

Cheers Con.

Same set up with a walk in room and two wine fridges at him. I found with Kennards its worth changing units every couple of years to reset the monthly rate which they seem to increase by 10% every year.

Willard wrote: I am still not sure, however, that this is the best way to go as there will be full exposure as to the extent of the wine collection....

I worried about that in the past. When I had the 3 fridges and a large rack, I had room for about 600 bottles at home. Temptation was easily resisted though and my problem morphed into either ‘I want to try something new’ or ‘that’s a bit young’. Lesson has been learnt since - buy 3 of the good and don’t buy a lot of wine that needs a very long time.

I reckon i’m 40 to 50% down from the max size I had and I must say I really do like just buying and drinking ready now wines.

I have a small 30 bottle wine fridge for wine that I am intending on drinking soon. I also have a 10 case climate controlled storage unit at WineArk Fortitude Valley .... I have been advised by the forum that I am likely to increase the size of said storage.

My wife and I currently own a standard 4 bedroom home. When our kids get older the plan is to build a larger more permanent home at which point installing a proper cellar will be a must.

The bulk is offside at Kennards, have a ~100 bottle fridge at home for new deliveries and drink now.

I have a cellar in the Adelaide hills in a professional facility, supposedly 110 dozen but its filling up fast approaching probably 900 bottles.

I had a small fridge in my flat in the Uk which is currently at a friends- about to move the contents to a small self storage facility in London to be able to put a few things away. I also have some stuff in bond at BBR.

There are also probably a few bottles in my folks fridge.
Just drink now stuff scattered around the flat here, its pretty easy to buy to drink straight away in Paris

What about how people arrange / organise / place at random within storage? I'm sure mine will descent into anarchy but I thought I'd organise certain types together (i.e. anniversary / birthday wines) together and then the rest as boxes of anticipated years of consumption.

My wines are in organised chaos with a basic theme of varieties grouped together with cheaper stuff at the top and more expensive older at the bottom. In this way I have to bend down to get at the good stuff on one of those late night raids that are regretted in the morning.

Carl

CellarTracker is your friend! Each bottle can be allocated a 'bin' and 'location' which you can use how you see fit based on your cellar configuration/layout. I can organise and re-organise "virtually" as much as I want.

I have six lockers at Kennards, each with 3 shelves. I've labelled lockers from 1 to 6 and the shelves are labelled as T(top), M(iddle) and B(ottom). Each box is numbered as follows: <Shelf><Locker><Box> For example, box M207 means the box is located on the middle shelf in locker #2 and it's box #7. My boxes all store 6 bottles each, so I only have to rummage through 6 bottles maximum to find what I'm looking for. This system has been working well for me. Playing Tetris to get access to boxes is my only gripe.

sjw_11 wrote: Just drink now stuff scattered around the flat here, its pretty easy to buy to drink straight away in Paris

A flat strewn with bottles of wine sounds like my kind of messy!

Cheers

Michael

Michael McNally wrote:

sjw_11 wrote: Just drink now stuff scattered around the flat here, its pretty easy to buy to drink straight away in Paris

A flat strewn with bottles of wine sounds like my kind of messy!

Cheers

Michael

There's some in every cupboard, and some more in a box on the floor... (and usually something open on the counter or in the fridge). Paris flats are pretty small!

I was going to store my wine at Kennards in Milton 6 months before the floods in 2011, as 3 big wine fridges was still not enough. I dodged a massive bullet there. It struck me one day to keep one of the fridges for the drink now stuff and I ended up insulating underneath my stairs and putting in a refrigeration unit. It sits constantly at 16 degrees and about 65-70% humidity. I am at capacity now at about 1100-1200 bottles including the fridge. I am looking at building a big verandah over my driveway to protect the cars (and more entertaining space, then buiding a bigger cellar in the current garage. I don’t want to have any more bottles (less if anything), but I want access to every single one of them.

Cheers
Ian

Ozzie W wrote:CellarTracker is your friend! Each bottle can be allocated a 'bin' and 'location' which you can use how you see fit based on your cellar configuration/layout. I can organise and re-organise "virtually" as much as I want.

I have six lockers at Kennards, each with 3 shelves. I've labelled lockers from 1 to 6 and the shelves are labelled as T(top), M(iddle) and B(ottom). Each box is numbered as follows: <Shelf><Locker><Box> For example, box M207 means the box is located on the middle shelf in locker #2 and it's box #7. My boxes all store 6 bottles each, so I only have to rummage through 6 bottles maximum to find what I'm looking for. This system has been working well for me. Playing Tetris to get access to boxes is my only gripe.

I'm pretty much the same as you Ozzie, just not as much capacity (yet).

With Kennards pricing on the increase, have been tempted to look around - anyone using Wineark in Melbourne?