Re: Storing wine

How's everyone else's wine storage

Darlene,

About 6 yrs ago, I partitioned off a corner of my basement with insulated walls & ceiling. The temperature gradually swings from about

The two most important things to do is keep it in the dark and keep the temperature (whatever it is) as constant as possible. It sounds like your basement is ideal. Slow temp changes of 10 degrees from summer to winter is GREAT.

I've stored my wines in my basement with a bit more fluctuation of temperature. I'm really lucky to have a brand new basementroom that was just poured for my new home addition. I will insulate the walls and make this my wine cellar-tasting room. Oh, I can't wait. You can find pictures on my website of my winecellar.

Dar & et al:

Oh how I wish I had a basement! After filling the only downstairs closet beyond capacity a few years ago an edict from the boss (which went something like " do something about your wines I want my closet back"!) forced me to design a wine closet UPSTAIRS in my large study. Built and insulated a double door 600 bottle wine closet finished in oak. Since it was upstairs and heat would be an issue in the summer it includes a Vinotemp wine cooler that keeps my wine 58 degrees and 70% humidity. Gotta admit it turned out great! If she only knew how much it cost! Sh.......

Hi Greg, Please explain why the wine should be kept in the dark. I have see this item in many home brewers (wine) books. There is no explanation of why. In beer there is the chemical change in the hop compounds due to UV light. Why do we, as wine makers always state that light is bad for wine. Is there a scientific back ground? If there is please post it. Thanks, Eddie V. The Wine And Beer Factory.

"Dar

Yeah. I always read that light doesn't affect wine. If it did, you would think there would be brown wine bottles.

There are a lot of chemical reactions that are induced by absorption of light. Wine has many colored components in it - which means it's absorbing light at certain wavelengths. Light will degrade these. I'm not sure what kind of explanation you want. Light can induce polymerization of polyphenols for example. The bottom line is, color and flavors can be harmed by light and wine will "age" faster in light than in the dark.

Well, there are brown wine bottles! :)

Have you noticed that wines intended for some time to age in the bottle - namely red wines - are always bottled in green glass? This is one way to protect it from light. White wines are often bottled in clear glass - less components in it that absorb the light energy and usually drunk at an earlier age.

Well, they do not stop much of the UV light, which is the really problematic light - but it will limit some of the visible light. This will help in preventing color fading of wine.

Have you noticed how curtains hung in a sunlit room tend to fade after a few years? Light will do the same to wine. A glorious red grape will fade toward rose. A beautiful berry wine will fade almost to clear. As it fades, it's flavor is effected as well, not just the color. Over a long period of time light can do a lot to anything left in it.

Green bottles may or may not help protect the wine. I always bottle dark wines in dark bottles. But one thing is for sure. Keeping them in a dark room will DEFINITELY help.

Ray

Thanks Greg, The many compounds in wine will definitely absorb some wave lengths of light specific to the compound. Polymerization or break down can occur. Polyphenols can also break down due to UV light. There are hundreds of compounds in wine. I would like to know what families are involved with polymerization or break down due to light. Are the flavonoids involved and are cinnamic acid family (phenolic compounds) involved? There are many more non phenolic groups are they involved? Eddie V.

Eddie,

Great questions. As a chemist, my chemical intuition tells me that any highly conjugated compound in wine has a potential to degrade due to light. This would certainly include phenolics, flavanoids and cinnamates. However, I don't know specifically what studies have been done on this. If I can find some time in the near future, I'll see what I can find in the scientific literature and forward that on to you.

Wow, you store wine in your torture chamber?! I keep all food products away from mine for health reasons. ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-)

That is a pretty 'goofy set-up'!! :-)

Thank Greg, That would be great if you can find any, thanks Greg. This is a mystery that most wine related universities do not want to get into (no finance). There studies are quality related but do not include storage conditions As yet quality going into the bottle is more important than the storage condition. The influence of light and UV on storage has not seen a lot of research (no funding) to bad as we as wine makers could learn a lot of this. The brown bottles used in beer reflect a lot (90%) of the UV radiation. While the green bottles only reflect 30 %. the Grolsch beer supplied in green bottles often has a "scunky aroma and taste". A mercaptan forms from the hop compounds due to UV radiation of the cynamatic acids group (sp?) of the hops in the beer. This is a know problem. On the other hand; tannins soften due to polymerization, would a certain wave length of light increase this? Then we would find a way to age wines faster (without magnets!), but there always is a negative. What would be the negative? Eddie V.

gvVoc.32301$ snipped-for-privacy@news20.bellglobal.com,

Eddie; See 'Principles and Practices of Winemaking' by Boulton et al page

Mine is staying in the cellar, along with my beer. I use more green than anything else and we use green Grolsch bottles for most of our beer too. We buy it by the case so I never had a skunky one by the way. I have no idea why they switched from brown to green, old Grolsch bottles were brown. The only time my beer or wine is exposed to sunlight is when we are consuming it, sunlight doesn't get much of a chance to do much... :o)

A lot of good Italian and German wines do come in brown bottles. I use brown too. Regards, Joe

Regards, Joe

Thanks Joe, I'll go hunting for that book. Eddie V. Brampton Ontario