www.redwinecellars.com.au
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- Aug 23, 2018
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You are right teammongoRegarding your orginal question - screw caps will not continue to age as only the packaged oxygen is available for aging (so the theory goes..). A cork may let more oxygen in via porousity and cycling movement with temperature changes. A bit of a mute point.
Some screw cap wines are packaged with nitrogen - thus will not age in the tradition sense. They are "always ready to drink". An example would the Molleydooker range.
Back to storage - I had 3 vintec wine fridges and found them incredible inefficient! They where cycling all the time with 2 of the 3 always on!
It is actually cheaper to have a refrigerated cellar than wine fridges, you get more volume and lower running costs. Also you have the booze on site, I tried off site, but could never get the good stuff when I "felt" like it..
A refridgerated concrete cellar with refrigeration panels gives excellent insulation, with virtually no temperature cycling.
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You are right teammongo. A correctly insulated cellar with a conditioning unit will provide a stable temperature environment for your wine and has lower running costs than multiple wine fridges.That is incorrect.
Oxygen is not required for many aspects of wine maturation. Also the seal in screwcaps can be purchased at various levels of porosity. Screwcap sealed wines mature about the same way a wine sealed with a "perfect cork" would - but without cork flavours that some people seem to like.
Study "proves" oxygen not necessary for wine ageing | Articles | JancisRobinson.com
I've been cellaring screwcap sealed reds since about 2002 vintage, they do mature and more consistently than wines sealed with natural cork.
Even Mollydooker wines mature under scewcap, I don't buy them much, but have a couple of 2010 vintage Carnival of Love and Enchanted Path that have developed significantly since release, not necessarily for the better, depending on how you like your wines.
This is my cellar: The Red Bigot Cellar
I probably have less than 100 cork-sealed wines now and I'm storing some of the scewcapped wines upright now, as per this more recent pic.
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