Vinomofo Wine Deals

As in drinking them? Ha ha. Everything in moderation! I'm tempted to enlist a family member to take advantage of the current $100 offer, but then I think, hang on I have two years worth of wine already ;)
 
Flyinfish said:
I've bought quite a bit of wine from the Fo over the last 12 months, too much perhaps ;). I'm a bit worried about how I am storing it now that warmer weather is with us. The whites and rose are in polystyrene wine storage cases, the reds are mostly still in the cartons they came in, and all are stored in an internal walk in wardrobe/cupboard in my Sydney apartment. I'm near the water and my apartment building is a very solid 1940s brick with concrete floors, so it's pretty well insulated and an even temp usually. Is there anything else I should be doing? Am I risking damaging the wines? Don't really want to go the wine fridge route...
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I asked my business partner the same question recently. Although I have different storage conditions, I was also starting to worry, particularly as I have some decent wines (mostly from other non-Fo purchases). I asked him, as he has been doing the wine thing seriously for many, many years, and has the cellar at home, the posh wine cabinets, and also two offsite storage rentals in Sydney.

His advice was very practical. In my case I have a cellar under the house and also some good storage indoors. He said to buy a fancy thermometer which measures temperature, humidity and the like and to monitor the levels in the areas where I store them. He said if those areas proved to be fairly constant and were in the optimal ranges usually quoted for wines, then he said not to waste any money on expensive wine cabinets, offsite storage options or re-building out the cellar with fancy wine cellar things.
 
I have a bit of experience in the cellaring side of things, having gotten more seriously into it in the early 1990s. I read quite a bit at the start (including James Halliday's "Setting up your own wine cellar" and Richard Gold's "How and Why to Build a Wine Cellar") but was on a student-working-in-a-wine-shop budget and living in share houses, so I couldn't do anything structural and didn't want to rent storage. I bought some Cellarboxes (Cellar Box absolutely no idea what they cost now) for the better stuff and kept it in the place with the coolest and/or most stable temperature in the house (under the stairs, under the house, as long as it's secure and not likely to flood, etc). The rest was in cardboard or wooden wine boxes with newspaper in there to fill out the voids. These days I have a "wine shed" (small garden shed insulated with 10 cm thickness of styrofoam sheeting, including the door and ceiling) and keep the cellarboxes in that. The shed is in the shade on the south side of the house. Wine I've had for over 15 years is still in excellent condition - low ullage and no weeping corks due to poor storage. The 1996 Bin 389's are drinking BEAUTIFULLY at the moment :) Total investment in the shed was probably under $500 to store as many as 25 dozen (sadly nowhere near that number now, but the mof_s are helping me re-stock).

For wine that you're going to store for less than 5 years, I'd argue that it probably doesn't matter that much. Sure, don't store it in the un-insulated garage or in a brightly lit room, but for this term it's not critical to have it "perfect". For wine that you might be keeping for 5 - 10 years (or more), the key is to reduce short-term variation, so relatively consistent temperatures rather than LOW temperature is the thing you want to aim for - insulation is a very good way! I'm sure I could have done a better job at keeping my wine, but at what cost? The vast majority of the wine I buy will be consumed in under 10 years, and my solution works well for that timeframe.
 
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Flyinfish said:
I've bought quite a bit of wine from the Fo over the last 12 months, too much perhaps ;). I'm a bit worried about how I am storing it now that warmer weather is with us. The whites and rose are in polystyrene wine storage cases, the reds are mostly still in the cartons they came in, and all are stored in an internal walk in wardrobe/cupboard in my Sydney apartment. I'm near the water and my apartment building is a very solid 1940s brick with concrete floors, so it's pretty well insulated and an even temp usually. Is there anything else I should be doing? Am I risking damaging the wines? Don't really want to go the wine fridge route...
Click to expand...

Red wine is remarkably robust and will survive many years of indoor temps up to around 25C with bursts of higher temperatures without appreciable damage and probably only moderate advanced ageing characteristics. Unless you want to cellar more than say 5-7 years your indoor cupboard seems perfectly adequate. If you are still concerned, get a max-min thermometer and keep records over summer.

Heat damage is more likely to occur during shipping in summer (sitting in the back of a truck or the merchants loading dock in the sun) than in indoor storage of the sort you describe.

White wine less robust, but should be quite Ok for a few years in those conditions, assuming a style meant to able to stand cellaring.
 
Wozza said:
I asked my business partner the same question recently. Although I have different storage conditions, I was also starting to worry, particularly as I have some decent wines (mostly from other non-Fo purchases). I asked him, as he has been doing the wine thing seriously for many, many years, and has the cellar at home, the posh wine cabinets, and also two offsite storage rentals in Sydney.

His advice was very practical. In my case I have a cellar under the house and also some good storage indoors. He said to buy a fancy thermometer which measures temperature, humidity and the like and to monitor the levels in the areas where I store them. He said if those areas proved to be fairly constant and were in the optimal ranges usually quoted for wines, then he said not to waste any money on expensive wine cabinets, offsite storage options or re-building out the cellar with fancy wine cellar things.
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Constant temp and humidity are less important for screwcapped wines.
Too high humidity can encourage mould though and ruin labels.
Too low humidity is supposed to be bad for corks (drying out), but there are so many other issues with corks this is a minor issue in comparison for 10 year cellaring.

Daily or fairly rapid temperature ranges of say 10C or more are supposed to cause corks to move slightly in and out, allowing oxygen ingress. Over 5-10 years I don't believe that would be noticeable and I've seen many wines from Canberra under-house cellars with quite large daily/weekly temp variations that have been perfectly fine at 10 or more years of age and no apparent increase in premature ageing/oxidation problems.

I use a standard domestic split-unit aircon to cool my cellar in summer (and heat it a little in winter) and have done for nearly 20 years. I used to run a humidifier in summer when humidity got below 40% but gave that up as the proportion of cork-sealed wines in my cellar has dropped rapidly in recent years.
 
I have a wine fridge for my most expensive wines, and wines for 15+ years of cellaring. My mid priced wines and wines for 5-10 years cellaring I have stored in apple boxes from Woolies. I line the bottom with newspaper, then the cardboard sheets that the apples sit in, I place two face to face. This creates a 'Honeycomb blinds' type insulation. Then each wine is wrapped in newspaper, then mirror the same method on top of the wines then seal it up. These are stored under my house. This costs basically nothing and seems to work well. The quaffer wines, up to 5 years cellaring I have in my 120 bottle wine rack bolted in a linen closet with a thermometer. Temps do fluctuate a little in Summer (I'm in Tassie so doesn't get too hot often) but like Red mentions above, I'm not too concerned with these wines as they don't last longer than 3 years before being consumed.
 
I got a Vintec last year on the Penfolds promo so my special wine lives there.
The rest of my wine is kept in a cellar that is reasonably stable I think.
Generally I don't keep my reds for more than 8 years, have had very few failures and the failures are the ones that I have had for 10 or 12 years hence I like my 8 year theory. Not worth trying to extract the "bit extra" from a wine only to have it go down the drain.

You also get to an age where you say to yourself will I be here in X years or healthy enough in X years to enjoy said wine?
 
As for a min/max thermometer, you can get a cheapy of ebay for under $10. Don't waste your money on something expensive.
 
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