How do you store your wine [+ Fridge/Cabinet recommendations]

[www.redwinecellars.com.au]

Regarding 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.

View attachment 160986

You are right teammongo

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.
View attachment 161068

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.

 

[blackcat20]

We recently fitted out our under stair space with a custom rack.


It fits almost 400 bottles.

 

[Steady]

Looks great BC20, is it TV’s handiwork?

 

[blackcat20]

Looks great BC20, is it TV’s handiwork?

I ordered it from Australian Wine Cellar Racks, and TV installed it.

 

[Daver6]

Regarding 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.

You are right teammongo

Factually incorrect. You can get different screw cap closures with different levels of porosity to allow air ingress/egress and hence aging.

 

[penegal]

Nice one BC20 & TV.

I will have to check it out when I visit next.

 

[wansze82]

Little nook under our stairs. Up right though.

 

[qaz]

Hi all. I'm moving to my new apartment soon and am looking for ideas for storing wine in a hall cupboard. It looks to be a good size for what I own (about 25 dozen, currently in a variety of boxes under the stairs), but I'm thinking about putting racks in there for ease of access. I have 8 Cellarboxes (bought about 30 years ago) for the bottles I'm keeping longer term, and I'm happy with keeping the 2-5 year cellaring bottles on the shelves, maybe with some foam lining to the cupboard if space permits, just to reduce short-term temperature variation.

Does anyone have some good resources on retrofitting a cupboard or wardrobe for wine storage? The plastic racks at Vinrac seem like a reasonable option at about $1/bottle, but I'm sure there are many other good ideas around!

I also have a few of those Cellarboxes, as well as some racks from importer Paul de Burgh-Day (which is now Robert Walters’ International Fine Wines and Bibendum Wine Co) that he designed himself which are still the best for Bordeaux bottles (but sadly not other shapes )

However my cellar has unfortunately overflowed such that I am now using Kennards for offsite storage (referrals)

 

[Bundy Bear]

Is the Vintec wine fridge which is about double the price of the Hisense wine fridge twice as good.

 

[Dr Ralph]

Is the Vintec wine fridge which is about double the price of the Hisense wine fridge twice as good.

Yes.

 

[Bundy Bear]

Went with the better unit for my Rockfords wine and other collection.

 

[mouseman99]

hi all,
I have bought a couple of second hand wine fridges (Lemair 59 bottle) to help store some wine. I have placed these in my garage. The fridge has a 5 degree difference from top to bottom. Whites on the bottom sit at around 11 degrees and the top shelf reds sit around 16 degrees.
My question is around storage in the winter time. I live in Melbourne and there is a chance the garage could be colder than the temperature required within the fridge. Is that a concern? I'm guessing the cooler wont come on and it will rise to the same temperature as the garage.
Does anyone else have this situation and is it a problem?
Thanks all

 

[MrEd]

hi all,
I have bought a couple of second hand wine fridges (Lemair 59 bottle) to help store some wine. I have placed these in my garage. The fridge has a 5 degree difference from top to bottom. Whites on the bottom sit at around 11 degrees and the top shelf reds sit around 16 degrees.
My question is around storage in the winter time. I live in Melbourne and there is a chance the garage could be colder than the temperature required within the fridge. Is that a concern? I'm guessing the cooler wont come on and it will rise to the same temperature as the garage.
Does anyone else have this situation and is it a problem?
Thanks all

I have the same situation with 2 of my fridges. During winter they only operate occasionally and I find the temperature doesn't fall below what's set even on the coldest nights. The insulating properties of the fridge and the volume of wine stored would help protect from extremes. I am in Perth, but some nights the temperature does get down below 5C.

 

[mouseman99]

Thanks for your input MrEd. Good to hear about the general insulating properties of your fridge doing a decent job for you. I would think that Perth however wouldnt have extended periods of low temperatures in the winter compared to Melbourne. Hopefully it wont be an issue

 

[Steady]

Thanks for your input MrEd. Good to hear about the general insulating properties of your fridge doing a decent job for you. I would think that Perth however wouldnt have extended periods of low temperatures in the winter compared to Melbourne. Hopefully it wont be an issue

I'm south of you, my cabinets are in a shed, they do go below the set temperatures for about 2 months - they don't fluctuate much daily due to insulation and thermal mass - just very slowly over weeks and then slowly back up. 2 of my cabinets have a temperature alarm I have to turn off. I don't think it makes a lot of difference (IMO) - it may slow their maturation down but they don't go near refrigeration temps.

 

[mouseman99]

They don't fluctuate much daily due to insulation and thermal mass - just very slowly over weeks and then slowly back up. 2 of my cabinets have a temperature alarm I have to turn off

ok good news. Thanks for your input. Not much to worry about it seems

 

[JessicaTam]

For those interested ALDI have a 28 bottle 'wine chiller' for $279 Saturday 23 May. 4-22 C temp range.

 

[Buzzard]

For those interested ALDI have a 28 bottle 'wine chiller' for $279 Saturday 23 May. 4-22 C temp range.

What you save on the chiller you might spend on electricity

 

[qaz]

One man and his cellars

Laurie Bilsborough has been installing and maintaining cellars in Sydney homes for 40 years. He’s seen a lot of impressive wine collections. #cellaringwine #Cellarwine #DomainedelaRomanéeContiLaTâche

www.therealreview.com

Laurie Bilsborough of Cellarwine (Sydney) answers questions including:

• What is the most important cellaring consideration?
• Is there an optimal ratio of wine to airspace?
• What are the dos and don’ts of cellars?

Along with recounting client encounters such as:

There’s a gentleman I visited yesterday who has this amazing house at Waverton looking across to the city skyline. It’s not a flash cellar. The cooler is probably 15 years old and it’s cactus. He’s got racking there for 1,000 bottles and it’s probably half full. But I look over in the corner, and there’s probably 50 or 60 cases of Wendouree that he hasn’t even unpacked. He’s been on the mailing list for a long time and he buys it every year.​

There’s a client that I did a cellar for, a lovely guy in the money market. I put a cooler into his cellar in his house for 3,500 bottles, and when I went back a year later to service the cooler, 90% of the wine in there was La Tâche. And when I got talking to him he says “This is only the tip of the iceberg”. He had something like another 5,000 at Wine Ark and another 15,000 off-shore. This guy would have probably the biggest single collection of La Tâche in the world.​

Don't miss the YouTube video of someone's wine rack collapsing and the catastrophe that results:

 

[cityloop]

My wine fridge does not store Champagne bottles (or very limited amounts) or the larger Chardonnay/Pinot bottles.
Has anyone come across a wine fridge that still have single layer shelving but with a wider heap in between to handle bottles bigger than standard bordeaux style?

Im not keen on the fridges with just a few shelves that encourage stacking, champagne bottles don't stack well due to the shape.