Basis for 55 degrees(F) optimal storage temperature

Salut/Hi Leo Bueno,

le/on Wed, 05 Oct 2005 11:17:13 GMT, tu disais/you said:-

I've not heard of any such studies, though can I ask you if you've done a search on Google?

My personal opinion is that 55 (12.8C for the rest of the world) is significantly too warm for long term optimum aging. I'd dispute "conventional wisdom" or even that this storage temperature IS conventional wisdom.

No, I have not done a search on Google. However, I have minded the question for some time now while reading about wine. All authors seem to have taken for granted the idea that there *is* an optimal storage temperature, somewhere between 50[F] and 60[F].

As an aside, I am inclined to do a non-scientific survey of climate-controlled wine storage facilities in the US inquiring as to their storage temperature (and humidity) and as to why they picked that particular temperature.

The 55[F] figure in the original message (and thread title) is not set in stone. I am inquiring generically about the basis for setting the "optimal" storage temperature, whatever figure is proffered to be so.

Yes, storing wine at its freezing or boiling temperatures is intuitively and obviously not a good idea. However, has anybody bothered to compare wine stored at, say, 50[F], 55[F] and 60[F]?

My concern is with the dictum (or is it gospel?) that wine should be stored at temperature X--which, as I mentioned, is generally pegged between 50 and 60[F]. My hunch, and that's all it is, is that there is very little evidence backing up the proposition that temperature X is optimal.

Thus the query: show me the data!

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Leo

You might like to check out:

3958#000000 I'm afraid you have to vote to see the results.

Additionally I would question what is actually meant by "optimal" in the context of storring wine. What is being optimised, and who is to judge?

Here are the results of my quick and dirty research.

The storage temperature listed are the ranges provided on each facility's web site (listed below the table). When only one figure was given (i.e., no range specified), it appears on both the low and the high end range column. Non-integer values were derived from Celsius to Fahrenheit conversion.

ENTITY TEMP-low TEMP-high Vintrust 58 58 East Bank Wine Storage 50 59 Marin Wine Vaults 55 57 Portland Wine Storage 55 55 Private Mini Storage 55 55 Horse Ridge Cellars 55 55 Seattle Wine Storage 55 55 The Wine Safe 55 55.8 Legend Cellars 57 57 Cellarit 57.2 57.2 Store-It 57.2 60.8 Stronbox Wine Cellar 55 55 AVERAGE 55.4 56.7

WEB PAGE

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Salut/Hi Leo Bueno,

le/on Wed, 05 Oct 2005 17:18:47 GMT, tu disais/you said:-

Thanks. Don't misunderstand me when I point out that all these facilities are in the USA. I certainly take the point that _in the USA_ these figures are general. Given that the cost of keeping a facility cool is related to the temperature difference between the target temperature and ambient, I wonder if this doesn't have something to do with it.

My only (non scientific) input here is that on the rare occasions when I've drunk a wine which has been stored at a steady cold temperature, it has seemed very young compared with the wines from the same year stored "normally". For this to have any serious evidential value, I'd have had to drink wines in parallel and I haven't. However, I HAVE had enough occasions when the storage has been an issue and when I've been looking out for symptoms of it. Maybe merely I found what I was looking for, though I don't think so.

I've not looked it up but I am sure that the majority of Bordeaux and Burgundy estate cellars are significantly colder than the figure you mention.

Salut/Hi DaleW,

le/on 5 Oct 2005 13:26:47 -0700, tu disais/you said:-

Well, well, well, thanks very much Dale. I can see I'll have to re-adjust my views on this. And yet .... it's not as if I've never visited a cellar and I've shivered!

I had heard that people speak of 57 degrees because it's the average underground temperature in most of France (and the northern US too)-- so if you have a below-ground cellar such as in Burgundy, Bordeaux, Champagne, etc. the wines are stored around 57 degrees.

Simply put, in general chemical reactions speed up at higher temperatures and slow down at lower ones. However some speed up/slow down faster than others.

We can easily demonstrate that too high a storage temperature is bad. Bad because we define what wine is supposed to taste like as Not tasting like what it tastes like if you store it in the attic for a hot summer.

As far as I know, nobody has shown any ill effects of storing wine at

34 degrees. But it ages more slowly. Could some reactions happen more strongly than others, so that in fifty years this wine is not as good as the 57 degree wine was after, say, 20 years? Perhaps. Or perhaps it's better.

The only thing I think we do know is that too hot is bad. That said, one of the best wine experiences I've had was with a bottle of inexpensive Bordeaux (Chateau Falfas, less than $15) that I left in my car for an afternoon (in the summer in NY) then cooled down to drinking temp. It was wonderful. Would I repeat the experience? Let's just say I consider myself lucky and doubt I could do it again.

Part of what makes this debate interesting is that we define "good" as tasting like what we're told wine is supposed to taste like. So a "properly" stored Bordeaux is what we're judging our wine against. When people start to prefer a different wine (as California cabs have been lately) vs. what the "objective standard" is, popular opinion changes and we have a different standard against which we judge newcomers.

Shaun Eli

Brain Champagne: Clever Comedy for the Smart Mind (sm)

Sounds like the consensus is that wine should be stored at somewhere between 55 and 59[F], however, there is no indication that the question has been addressed *empirically*.

Yes, every GD wine book one reads says so, but I suspect that the guy or gal writing the book got the figure from another guy/gal who got it from another. . . . but that nobody looked at the question critically.

So what if the average temperature in a Bordeaux cellar is 57[F]? Why don't we pick the average temperature in a *Burgundy* cellar instead? Does that necessarily mean that 57[F] is the optimal temperature--whater it is we are trying to optimize, as another writer in the thread mentioned?

This discussion is leading me to think that 55 or 57 or 59[F] or whatever are values plucked out of the air.

Again, is anyone aware of any *evidence* that indicates the optimal range to be somewhere between 55 and 60[F]?

I don't think it would be terribly difficult to set aside bottles of a moderately priced wine of reasonably good quality and store batches of, say, 30 bottles each at 35, 40, 45, 50, 55, 60, 65, 70, 75 and

80[F] and evaluate their development using an experienced tasting panel over the course of several years.

Until I see some studies like that, I remain skeptical (or is it sceptical, in Brit speak?) about the idea that wine should be stored at 55[F], of 57 or 59, or whatever the gurus say is the "correct" temperature.

I do not doubt the "correct" temperature is to be found somewhere between freez>Salut/Hi DaleW,

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So you vant know vats dis 55F for kipping vine. It comes from Morris Broadbent whho had a store & ice house. Dere waz a terrible heat wave in London and he ordered too much ice & when it cooled down he could move it. Luckily his nephew Garth wrote on wine for da London Gavotte Picayune--dis was about 1811...so he wrote, yuse must store yer vine at 55F so you get da most plezure--dis is for clarets--whites get a little more chill. Soon the Broadbents were out of da old ice & dats da vey it was, vere's the noisse, i got such angina,,,,,

Parker published an article discussing his own wine storage. He had stored a significient quanty of wine at a relatively high temp(mid

60's F) at his office, as I recall. He stated he could not tell the difference between those wines and others that he had stored elsewhere at 55F or so after some two or three years.

Pure speculation follows:

Storage of wine is, or at least should be, based on what will happen to the wine after its storage time, and the length of that time. If the wine is to be consumed at its "optimum" point of development, after a storage time determined by the owner of that wine, then the 55F temp seems to be a common one. Maybe, like the decisions on what grapes to plant in the Medoc was determined by centuries of experimentation.

If the wine is to be stored, in hopes of selling it for a much higher price at some time well into the future, than a lower temp might well be considered, i .e. 45F is often cited as "ideal" as this lower temp will retard "development" of the wine, and allow for a greater time in cellar, before it reaches its " optimum" point.

Where 55F came from, one can only conjecture. Perhaps years of observation. However, finding a wine's apogee of development is a very personal thing. I may like my CA Cab at 5yr @ 55F, while you might like them much younger, or very much older. Let us know if you can find a true "basis" for the temp question, though, as it might prove interesting, just as this thread has.

Hunt

"DaleW" skrev i melding news: snipped-for-privacy@g49g2000cwa.googlegroups.com... . And I think that results from places like Glyniss Castle (I know that I'm misspelling that,someone help!)

Glamis

helped? Anders :-)

The chemical formula uses degrees Absolute, and the 10 degree approximation.

If one wishes to slow down the reaction, why stop at 55 F? If 55 is good, is not 45 better, and 33F best?

My guess is the cellars in some big important areas are about 55 F, so that has become the choisen temp.

I keep my cellar a bit cooler...about 50 degrees and maintain a high humidity as well over over 60%.

Why....cause I want long lived wines that mature and age in the bottle. Also cause some of my wines won't get much better and this will slow their development.

I subscribe that the cooler the cellar above freezing the slower the maturity.

Sounds to me like some of you should also be cellared :-)