Avoiding The Pitfalls of Wine Shipping & Storage – Part One - Temperature
Sorry folks, parks closed (a little National Lampoons humor)… really I do apologize for my lapse on the blog front, I went just took a month off in the Caribbean and married a wonderful woman (thank you Megan)!
What a great setting and place to have a special occasion, the sunset on our wedding night was amazing and after our fantastic wedding week stay on
Water Island in the USVI, we got to go island hopping on the British side of the Virgin Islands (
BVI’s). At times it felt like the paradise that the team of
LOST lived in, but more often it seemed like paradise found. Either way you are in a great place, one just has a little more conveniences than the other… which brings me back around to wine and the point of this column. While down in this lush environment, it was HOT, like boil an egg on your engine block hot, and I observed a great number of things being done to wine that really should not have been. This inspired me to produce and share info as to the main ways you can provide a safe environment for your wines and avoid the unnecessary pitfalls.
Winemakers across the world want you to taste what their bottle was intended to taste like, not a damaged version.
TEMPERATURE
WATCH THE HEAT – Heating up or “cooking” wines by having them sustain temperature levels above roughly 85 degrees Fahrenheit / 30 Celsius is rough on wine and can even be disastrous. OK, disastrous is a harsh word, but leave a big red wine in your car on a hot summer afternoon for a couple hours and you might just have a new Burgundy colored interior. In the interior of a parked car on a hot day the temperature can easily reach 120 degrees and will cook your wine. The heat pushes the cork out and up out of the bottle, sometimes all the way for a really big mess. Leaving a bottle for a few minutes when you are running into a store should be fine, just don’t leave it there too long.
Heat can also happen in your house, in a warehouse, in shipping, really the ideal setup is to not have your wines exposed to strong heat levels and look for the warning signs when purchasing or opening wines. The easiest ones to spot are when corks are pushed up out of the bottle, when you see any leakage in the case, on the capsule or along the side of the bottle, and when you open a wine (red is easier to spot) if it has a long red line of wine stain up the side of the cork instead of just on the bottom of the cork that should have been in contact with the juice. The resulting flavors or effect of “cooking a wine” varies; in most cases the wine actually tastes cooked or baked. The fruit aspect moves toward a stewed/jammy fruit flavor instead of fresh flavor and you might find some roasted, burnt or caramel notes. In a number of cases this process can also have an effect on the color of a wine, changing it from a deep red to a brownish or bricked red coloration.
Heat during the storage process can prematurely age wines. As aging is an organic process it stands to scientific reason that if you have twice the heat, you literally will age the wine twice as fast. Be wary about locations that you don’t think about that get hot, a few examples to watch are: a garage or shed with little insulation that heats up during the summer, we already mentioned the car, but this can also happen in trucks, suv’s or your RV headed to the lake (a bit overboard here), avoid storage next to furnaces or major appliances that get hot, and finally watch out for storing in a spot that gets heated up during the day by a tone of extra sunlight (window light/heat).
FREEZING ISN’T GOOD EITHER – It doesn’t happen as frequently as when wine gets cooked, but in reality exposure to extreme cold is also a very bad thing. Wine can freeze, if you put a bottle in your freezer for a long period of time, it can quickly tell you how cold your freezer actually is. Wine freezes below 32 Fahrenheit / 0 Celsius at roughly half of its alcoholic strength (usually about 20 Fahrenheit / -6 Celsius. I still will always use and love the tip “to get a wine chilled quickly, stick it in the freezer for just ten minutes”, it brings the wine down in temperature to a perfect level for immediate consumption. The key to good use of this tip, be sure not to forget about your bottles. If a wine freezes, the same effect happens to the warm bottles where the liquid expands and it pushes its way out of the bottle, breaking a screwcap seal or pushing a cork up and out of the bottle. For safety’s sake (especially in cool climates buying wines from the outstanding importer
Marquee Selections), again watch storage in shed’s/garages that are unheated, left outside or in a car on extreme cold evening, and your icebox.
JUST PERFECT – THE RIGHT STORAGE TEMPERATURE – Not too cold, or too hot is the key, wine is a hearty beverage and if exposed to a lot of shaking, some mild heat, etc… given a period of rest before consuming (could be a week to a couple months) damage to wine seems to wear off and the beverage bounces back to taste like the winemaker intended. The ideal storage temperature and the common rule for cellar storage and room temperature dates back hundreds of years (yes, even before air conditioning). In the 1800’s and 1900’s houses, castles, and wineries did have a cellar on the property, the location all wine was stored, safely underground. A few feet underneath the earth’s surface it cools nicely and provides a stable environment with light humidity in which wine can age gracefully over long periods of time. The normal cellar temperature to age wines to be consumed during your own lifespan is between 50 Fahrenheit / 10 Celsius and 60 Fahrenheit / 15 Celsius. A few degrees higher and lower than the suggested temp matter very little (unless you plan to age wines for a number of years before consumption).
Personally my cellar is not separated and cooled more than any other part of my house, but I intentionally have it in the basement (below ground) to avoid temperature changes and to provide a bit more humidity. I do realize that not all houses have basements across the country (shout out to my friends in Florida), but several alternative locations do exist that provide a dark, cool area such as interior closets or refrigerated wine storage units.
SERVING/TASTING TEMPERATURE - Now that we have made sure our wine is stored in a great location, have avoided the heat and cold in transit and our wine is ready to be consumed, we need to serve this tasty beverage at the optimum temperature. Serving wines at the right temperature is not a real science, but instead is an application of common sense, insight about the wine, and knowing the tasters palate. Long ago wines were brought up from the cellar at 55 Fahrenheit / 12.5 Celsius and allowed to gracefully warm up to room temperature for serving. In today’s world not everyone has a cellar, but we do have the advantage of refrigeration! Here is my cliff notes version of what I serve and why.
· Serve Tannic/Big Reds at room temperature in many places around the globe; 70-75 Fahrenheit / 22-24 Celsius. This is achievable and simple, some suggest that chilling down to a bit colder level would be the optimum, but I find that it rather hard to ensure you achieve and a bit impractical. The palate is a sensitive creature and with the big reds you want to be cognoscente of a few key items. One, at higher temperatures it is easier to find sweetness, and two, warm wines effect the tannin perception making the wine taste hot or alcoholic. Please be aware that room temperature outside in Las Vegas during summer, is nowhere near the same as summer in Quebec. Vegas would need a definite chill down before going outside.
· Serve Lighter Reds with a slight chill, just a touch under room temperature 70-75 Fahrenheit / 22-24 Celsius. Wines with a lighter/fruitier structure such as Pinot Noir or Beaujolais benefit from a slight chilled touch because it brings out more complex tannins and allow you to find more of the good (and bad things aka wine faults) in your reds. Taking a light red and putting it for 10 minutes in the refrigerator before serving is a common practice I use.
· Serve Complex Dry Whites at with a chill, but allow them to warm up after the first pour to 55-65 Fahrenheit / 13-18 Celsius. The right chill makes wines in this category taste refreshing, while still showing off the subtleties necessary to pair more rich foods. I like to have my bigger whites like Chardonnay, Semillion, and Alvarinho chilled in a fridge/cellar environment and then put out on the table in a normal environment for 10 minutes to warm up a bit before serving. After pouring the wines will warm up in your glass, therefore I advise putting the bottle into a chilled location again until you are ready for more (ice bucket, fridge, etc…)
· Serve Lighter Whites, Sparkling & Roses at the coldest temperature 50-55 Fahrenheit / 10-13 Celsius. Crisp is my favorite word for light whites and roses served at the right temperature. The coldness/chill allows the wines to show their acidic backbone without making you pucker. Avoid serving the wines TOO cold, because you may rob them of the nose and taste that were intended (alternatively if you have wines with off flavors, flaws, or aromas serve them cold to mask this quality). If you serve sparkling wines TOO warm, you are increasing the amount of Carbon Dioxide produced and they can appear fizzy or frothy when consumed. Serve straight from the fridge or ice bucket and return there.
For all of those that made it to then end, I applaud you and your reward is a Cribb Note about two exciting scores on our Caligiore Organic Wines…
Cheers!
~CJCToday’s Cribb Note – Watch out Malbec Producers…
Caligiore Organic Wines from Mendoza, Argentina was just awarded an amazing 91 Points – “Best Buy” from
Wine & Spirits Magazine for the 2008 Caligiore Reserve Malbec and 88 Points “Best Buy / Extreme Value” for the equally fetching 2008 Staccato Malbec / Cabernet Blend, outstanding scores for wines that retail for $14.99 and $9.99 respectively.
Keep up the great work Gustavo, you are truly making artisan, organic wines!
Christopher J. Cribb, CSW
GM - General Manager
Marquee Artisan Wines -
http://www.marquee.com/Cell - 816.223.9201 - Office - 913.663.9416
Fax – 913.663.9416 – Blog –
marqueewines.blogspot.com 
