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Hi all. I live in Melbourne and I have a small cellar that I made under my house. I have waterproofed the walls and did some insulation on walls and partial ceiling.

Holds temperature at 19-20deg. Daily variance is at most 1 deg. Hot days might go up to 21deg. Unsure what the temperature will be during winter.

Will my wines survive? Will it age prematurely? I have around 300 bottles stored. Mainly the wendourees, noons and Marius.

Thanks for your comments

Hi there,

While that small temperature variation is really good, 19 to 20 is a bit warm overall and the wines will age prematurely. Target a temperature closer to 14 degrees. Others will give you a different target temperature, but no one will recommend 19 to 20 for long term ageing,

limkeith wrote:Hi all. I live in Melbourne and I have a small cellar that I made under my house. I have waterproofed the walls and did some insulation on walls and partial ceiling.

Holds temperature at 19-20deg. Daily variance is at most 1 deg. Hot days might go up to 21deg. Unsure what the temperature will be during winter.

Will my wines survive? Will it age prematurely? I have around 300 bottles stored. Mainly the wendourees, noons and Marius.

Thanks for your comments

G’day
I have had a similar passive storage cellar for quite few years. I have yet to come across any obvious premature aging. I suggest if you have concern then buy a wine fridge for the high end bottles and keep mid range wines in passive cellar.
Regards

What's it like in winter or is it a recent build? Our old mostly underground cellar in Adelaide held around 20C in summer and around 15C in winter with no daily fluctuations. Wines did age faster, something we established by comparing same wines from a temperature controlled cellar. However the ageing process, whilst faster was still gradual and none fell over from excessive aging. By drinking each wine on a regular basis they could be drunk before they started to slip. Occasionally one slipped through.

Given the cold Melbourne winters I'd like to think the temperature will be much lower and low in daily fluctuation and you will be well rewarded. Certainly much better than my new primitive under house storage in Sydney where ageing is rapid but wine still good. A positive is it partially negates the added ageing period issue with screwcaps that has frustrated me for years

Hi all

Thanks for your help. It has been a recent build. Since October last year. Didn’t have a chance for it to go through a winter.

I do have 3 wine fridges!! ;<) Just wanted to have mass storage for as you guys said, the mid tier wines. Hopefully winter will get to 14-15 deg and it can hold its thermal mass.

Chuck, when you say premature aging, what’s it like? Like a 20 year type wine drops to 10? You get secondary characteristics after 4-5 years instead of 8-10?

Thanks again!

A few thoughts on this question;

1. I think you will just fine if the summer temp never exceeds 20 deg. You have robust strong Aussie reds, they can handle a little bit of abuse, not like vintage champagne or high end red burgs
2. Wizz is absolutely correct that 14 deg is best. But for me it kinds of depends how long you want to cellar the wines for and how old you are. I have a temp controlled cellar but I run it at average of 16 deg as I am in my sixties. If you want to cellar the Wendourees for 40 years then yes the temp will matter.
3. At the temp ranges you are describing, I think the wines will age faster - but not that much. It is not premature aging to me; more like a gentle form of accelerated aging. I believe the wines you mention will cellar for 20+ years in your passive cellar.
4. Make sure the cellar packed full of liquid in summer for thermal mass. Reduce air space to minimum. I would get used 5l and 10l plastic containers and fill them with water to increase thermal mass if you are concerned.
5 Also you could a put a temp probe in a bottle of water on the cellar and monitor it during the summer so you can see what is happening

good luck and enjoy

brodie wrote:A few thoughts on this question;

1. I think you will just fine if the summer temp never exceeds 20 deg. You have robust strong Aussie reds, they can handle a little bit of abuse, not like vintage champagne or high end red burgs
2. Wizz is absolutely correct that 14 deg is best. But for me it kinds of depends how long you want to cellar the wines for and how old you are. I have a temp controlled cellar but I run it at average of 16 deg as I am in my sixties. If you want to cellar the Wendourees for 40 years then yes the temp will matter.
3. At the temp ranges you are describing, I think the wines will age faster - but not that much. It is not premature aging to me; more like a gentle form of accelerated aging. I believe the wines you mention will cellar for 20+ years in your passive cellar.
4. Make sure the cellar packed full of liquid in summer for thermal mass. Reduce air space to minimum. I would get used 5l and 10l plastic containers and fill them with water to increase thermal mass if you are concerned.
5 Also you could a put a temp probe in a bottle of water on the cellar and monitor it during the summer so you can see what is happening

good luck and enjoy

Excellent, I believe you covered it all.

Agreed, brodie is on the money. I wouldn't be storing whites or bubbles in there myself (and nor are you I assume), but for more robust reds, really no issue in the shorter/medium term at 19-21C. Consistency is key, and avoiding hot spikes. Above 25C for extended periods I wouldn't be comfortable but sounds like you've got a good space for those bigger reds that will benefit from extra cellar time, and will mature a touch faster that at 14C. Purists could try to argue that the aged tertiary characteristics may not be as classic as a longer term rest at 14C but given most will be screwcap anyway, IMHO the jury is out on all fronts in terms of that tertiary note in those circumstances.

Main thing is you're avoiding hot temps and they will be fine.

Cheers
Tim

I wonder if we worry more than we need to - JH’s cellar has/had some expensive burgundy etc but it surprised me to read it ranges from 15 to 22 deg C. I am sure he could afford to control it if he thought it necessary.....
https://www.winecompanion.com.au/resources/c ... s-halliday

Yeah agreed we do worry more than we need to for more riper style reds (and perhaps Burgundy, but given the prices they are today vs Halliday's era I'd not risk it). Dave vino hosted a wine dinner years ago looking at various storage issues, the only one some noticed a vague change in was the wine left in extreme conditions for 12+ months. And even then it wasn't a drastic change, although I wouldn't have wanted to leave it for much longer. Original thread is here... only caveat was that it was a young and very robust style of wine. [url]https://forum.auswine.com.au/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=15492[/url]

The Torture Test

For me this was very eye opening, I thought without a doubt that the Heat Affected one would be nothing but port or a stewed mess. The fact of the matter was, no-one could say with any real confidence which one it was. They knew the control one so they could compare to it. Even knowing which one it was, I could see it was a bit flatter on the palate but that was all. (and I reckon had I not known the order I would not have picked it). It just doesn’t seem conceivable that a wine could be subjected to 45C+ days for 3-4 days/weeks at a time (probably hotter being in between the venetian blinds and window) and not suffer any real ill-effects after 14 months. It sort of made me re-think that when the courier guy leaves it on the doorstep for a few hours in the sun, or it being delivered during a hot spell may not stress me out as much now. (admittedly whites would probably be a whole different story). Obviously if done over 10 years you’d expect more difference, although that is quite extreme storage conditions. These bottles were under screwcap for what it is worth. They are age-worthy wines with 10-20 years well within their drinking window.

Funnily enough most people preferred the one that had been frozen. (I’d frozen it solid the night before, I did unscrew the cap to-loose as I didn’t want it exploding). The one in the blender was seen as the worse (most thought that it was the heat affected one) all I did was pour it in the plastic cup and blended for about 15 secs at 20,000rpm and then back in the bottle. The Travelator (Travel Shock) one no-one could see any real discernible difference in it, and makes me think the whole idea is a bit meh. (thanks to Tez my dad for knocking it up for me, out of some old wood and bbq rotisserie motor)

A_Steady wrote:I wonder if we worry more than we need to - JH’s cellar has/had some expensive burgundy etc but it surprised me to read it ranges from 15 to 22 deg C. I am sure he could afford to control it if he thought it necessary.....
https://www.winecompanion.com.au/resources/c ... s-halliday

Personally I would be worried. I was always shocked that Halliday stored his wines as such.

It's a tough debate. I've presented ex-Chateau/ Domaine versus the market and it was always the former that clearly performed. Now the market versus the OP's cellar conditions ( which aren't too bad ) isn't quantifiable.

Sealed with screw cap and bolder Aussie styles I'm with some of the above. This cellar should be fine. I've a friend with a passive cellar in Mt Macedon and his wines are lovely.

Years ago I saw a lineup up Dalwhinnie shiraz where some had been in uncontrolled passive cellars and some had been professionally cellared. Wines were up to 10 years of age. Side by side the difference was clear - the passively cellared ones were a little flatter and duller, and perhaps further along their life.
If you were served the wines on their own you might not be able to tell - just that the passively wines weren't as good as you expected.

Lots of good points of view here. I am in the camp that we tend to worry more about this than what we should, which is only natural, we want to get the best out of our wines long term, but I think we do think things are worse than they really are. Here are a couple of my cellaring experiences.

The "cellar" in Melbourne was an underfloor space, maybe 1100mm high, under a suspended timber floor in a 35yo brick veneer (three) split level house, under the mid level floor, accessible from the lowest level. The cellar floor was originally natural ground, which I benched and paved out, but there was no additional insulation, apart from a fair thermal mass of wine. Some wines had been there since we moved in in 1996, so 24 years. I was surprised a couple of years ago when I monitored the temperature during a reasonably warm time and it was about 21deg, which freaked me out a bit, I thought it was cooler than that. Diurnal variation was minimal which was good. The temperature went down in winter, maybe to 16deg. Regardless, I have never seen any really prematurely aged wines come out of there, so that cellar appears to have worked ok. I had a bit more than half of my wine there and the rest in professional storage due to space limitations.

We shifted to Adelaide recently into a 110yo stone villa, which is built like a tank. It has an original underground cellar in good nick in which I can stand up, which is a welcome change, being 6'4". I haven't had a chance to monitor temperature yet as I am still waiting on some temperature sensors which I expect will arrive next week. It hasn't been a particularly hot summer here, but I think I will find the temp is probably about 18deg which will be ok. I expect that daily variation will be absolutely minimal. I still have wine at Kennards back in Melbourne as well as a small amount at Kennards in Adelaide, so I'm a bit all over the place. I think that the new cellar will be fine, even if its not 14deg.

Just to finish off, its worth mentioning a "cellaring" experience from when I went to Thailand for work in the early 90's. We took 8doz bottles with us and they were stored on a wine racks in the living area of the house there, in which the air conditioning was typically only on late in the day/evening. Every day was mid to high 30's and the inside of the house was pretty warm during the day. Heaps of diurnal variation! Apart from the fact that we seemed to have a lot of new friends all of a sudden , I did notice a change in the wine after a few months and it was definitely noticeably deteriorating. Fortunately, it was all gone by about six months anyway.

The Thailand example was extreme, but I think that as long you keep temperatures below 20 deg or so and ensure that daily variation is minimal, then you will enjoy wine for years without any problems.

Great advice above. What I'll add is to ensure that you procure your wines from sources that you trust to treat and store them properly. Nothing worse than perfectly cellaring a wine for years to then end up with a faulty wine because someone mistreated the bottle before you acquired it.

Unfortunately, this happened to me only last week. A couple bottles of Champagne that I'd stored at 14 degrees for 4 years tasted rather dull, presumably due to light strike before I acquired them from auction.

I also note from the Halliday article which A_Steady posted that Halliday mentioned he would store his wines at 14 degrees, if he were starting again. From my own perspective, I look at it this way. I don't have any certainty that a 20 degree cellar won't adversely impact my wines compared with a 14 degree cellar, just opinions that go both ways. Given the money I've spent on the wines in my cellar, I'm not prepared to take the risk, so I err on the side of caution and store at a temperature controlled 14 degrees.

mjs wrote: We shifted to Adelaide recently into a 110yo stone villa, which is built like a tank. It has an original underground cellar in good nick in which I can stand up, which is a welcome change, being 6'4". I haven't had a chance to monitor temperature yet as I am still waiting on some temperature sensors which I expect will arrive next week. It hasn't been a particularly hot summer here, but I think I will find the temp is probably about 18deg which will be ok. I expect that daily variation will be absolutely minimal. I still have wine at Kennards back in Melbourne as well as a small amount at Kennards in Adelaide, so I'm a bit all over the place. I think that the new cellar will be fine, even if its not 14deg.

About five years ago I bought a stone villa in Adelaide for retirement. We looked at many which included those with cellars though in the end, it was a minor consideration, as I felt I'd be better with a wine fridge and a Kennards account for long term storage ( though how sustainable Kennards will be with their incessant price hikes ? )

The issue with South Aussie stone cellars is humidity. They were never really designed for wine but more preserving and storing food stuffs before refrigeration. Come summer, the northerlies off the continent will see the cellar bone dry. Not an issue with screw cap though chaos for cork.

limkeith wrote:Hi all. I live in Melbourne and I have a small cellar that I made under my house. I have waterproofed the walls and did some insulation on walls and partial ceiling.

Holds temperature at 19-20deg. Daily variance is at most 1 deg. Hot days might go up to 21deg. Unsure what the temperature will be during winter.

Will my wines survive? Will it age prematurely? I have around 300 bottles stored. Mainly the wendourees, noons and Marius.

Thanks for your comments

I built a cellar in my garage (it's actually portable, if I could find somewhere to store a thousand or so bottles) and got a second hand [url=https://www.eurocave.com.au/wine-cellar-cond ... s/inoa-25/]Eurocave inoa-25[/url] for half price - fully reconditioned. With the right advice on insulation, it stays nicely between 14 & 15 degrees and the humidity is also pretty steady. I did need to get a 15amp line installed, but the sparkies are friendly down here!