True-- nobody that I know of has done any scientific testing of storing wine at various temperatures for years. The wine industry says 57 degrees is optimum storage, but that number was chosen pretty much because that's the average underground temperature in much of France, where wineries store their wine before release.
Over 70 or 75 for long enough, and wine goes bad faster.
In general chemical reactions go faster at higher temperatures. But some reactions may speed up more than others, so unfortunately you can't take a bottle of young Bordeaux, stick it in 130 degree water for an hour and call it twenty years of aging. On the other hand I once left an inexpensive Bordeaux in a car for a few hours in the summer, put it in the fridge to cool it back down, and it was much better than any of the other 11 bottles of the same wine I had. So you never know...
I just don't think it makes a lot of sense to spend $2000 to cellar 400 bottles of wine you're going to drink within a couple of years, if you have a basement that stays below 70 degrees all year. But if it gets hot where you live, or you want to store some wine for 20 years, you may not have any other choice.
Shaun Eli
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