Can cold wine go warm?

"Andrew" skrev i melding news: snipped-for-privacy@11g2000cwr.googlegroups.com...

Depends... I guess you'll consume them fairly quickly. If so, go ahead. But, if that rack is in the kitchen and the temperature is above 70F and you're going to leave them there some months - you'd better pour'em down the drain. Find a nice dark closet with below 65 or 60 degrees F and voilà, you can keep'em several months, no problem :-) hth Anders

Yes :)

No, really - they will be fine. The colour of the wine is immaterial. If you move the wines to and from the fridge every day for the next few years it might well affect them. But once or twice, no problem.

The kitchen is usually < 70 for sure. In the 67-68 range. But regardless, we'll be drinking them within 6 months probably.

Thanks for your help everyone!

I beg to differ. Depends how much above 70 of course, but if you're talking about a few degrees, they'll be fine for several months.

Several years, or a few decades, and it would be a different story. Even then I would try them before pouring them down the drain!

As a rule of thumb the wine will develop twice as fast for each 10degC increase in temp. And if there is some bret in the wine the elevated temp might encourage that to develop even faster.

In Phoenix all one has to do is set their wine in a rack in an open room for a few months and run the risk of losing some. Even though the A/C is running at 70F or so the daily temperature swings in any given part of the house can be excessive and damage the wine. Lost too many bottles before I installed a wine cooler for my collection.

Whats more important than the actual temperature is stability. If your kitchen is 67-68 day or night every day then no problem for 6 months. If that part of the house experiences 10+ degree swings from night to day that could be a problem.

What about storing an aged red in the fridge just to keep it at a reasonably constant temperature temporarily? I imagine it wouldn't develop, but would it do any damage?

David

P.S. Today I received the '84 Grange that I mentioned in an earlier thread. It's to be consumed on Friday. The forecast is for low and mid-20C days until then, and around 15C at night, though the range in the house would be less than that.

What would be the point of sticking red wine in a refrigerator in the first place. Watched a Wine Library video of his tasting of a really good red given as a gift but not stored well for 12-15 years. The wine was still great and his point was that wine is fairly resilient. Heat only speeds aging unless the wine gets hot enough to seep from the bottle or push the cork. Don't stress over short-term storage. And refrigerators are bad for long-term storage because they deteriorate the corks and are too cold to allow any aging.

I'm not even sure that freezing wine would damage it, but I don't intend to find out. But, er, yes... keep below boiling point is certainly sound advice ;)

You might want to keep it for an occasion in a month or two, so it's either the fridge or the house. Around here the house can reach 35 C on hot days and cool to < 20 at night. Maybe the fridge would be better than a couple of months of that.

Another possibility, though a little desperate, is to bury it in the garden. A couple of feet down it's a steady, mild temperature.

David

Pure Bullshit.

And that is based on what. I have been given wines that were badly stored and still did well. What do you base your ill-informed statement on.

Temperature stability is often more important than the actual temperature itself. Moderately large temperature swings in an open room kills wine.