The perfect cellar is an underground storage facility that is damp, cool and kept at a constant-temperature. The savings on future cooling costs alone justify the large expenditures on tunnels and caves for wineries to age and store their wines for future release.
The same could hold true for an enophile who wants to purchase and store wines. Unfortunately, most of us don’t have the perfect location for a cellar; hence the advent of numerous types of cooling facilities and units. My first wine-storage facility was a small room with a tiny air conditioner in the window. This is not ideal for the long term because an air conditioner can suck the humidity out of the air, and even if the bottles are stored properly on their sides, the corks can dry out and cause leakage.
The best type of storage facility, other than a cellar, is some type of refrigeration unit that has temperature and humidity control. I had a refrigerated closet for many years at a temperature of 60 degrees and only 50% humidity, and the wines aged perfectly (even though many contend that 50% humidity is too low). Although there are no magic numbers, a constant temperature of around 55 degrees and humidity of 65%-70% is just about right. If humidity is too high, labels can be ruined and mold can begin to form around the tops of the corks (I’ve seen this several times).
Generally speaking, most white wines do not need cellaring. Of course there are exceptions, including but not limited to the better white Burgundies and Sauternes; however, most other whites are ready to drink when bottled, so cellaring them is not absolutely necessary.
The traditional wines to cellar are the better Bordeaux wines and Ports, some of which can improve every year for 10, 20 or even 30 years, and then remain in excellent condition for years thereafter. This is also true to some extent for the top Burgundies, Rhones, California Cabernets, Super Tuscans, Barolos, some Spanish reds and Australian Shiraz, to name the most important.
As the tannins in the great reds from an excellent vintage combine with coloring and other materials over the years and fall to the bottom as sediment, the resulting wine can be very smooth, complex and even ethereal. A perfect example of the benefits of cellaring for me was the 1964 Chateau Latour. As one of my favorite, barely affordable wines in the mid-‘70s, it was still fairly rich, but had smoothed out as the tannins had resolved, and I thought it had a good future even though it probably wouldn’t get any better. In 1977, I had a 1964 Chateau Latour at Chateau Latour, brought up from their cellars where it had been resting since bottling. Unlike the same wine in the U.S., which nobody could really tell where the various bottles had been stored since bottling, much less how many hours the wine may have sat on a hot dock, non-refrigerated truck, etc., the wine was still very dark in color, young, closed up, slightly unyielding and would have continued to im prove for another 10 years or so. Proper cellaring produced a truly different and substantially more valuable wine. (Today, of course, the better wines are shipped under refrigeration, so this shouldn’t be as much of a problem.)
Some other reasons to cellar special, big reds are:
1—If the wine is highly sought after, it might soar in value. I purchased some 1989 Chateau Haut Brion at release, around 1992, for less than $100 a bottle, and within four years it was worth $350 a bottle. When you serve a wine like that, nobody asks what you paid for it—you just get credit for serving an amazingly expensive and, in this case, fabulous wine.
2—If the wine is on any kind of allocation, the only way you will have some in four to five years is if you bought it at release and cellared it.
3—If you cellar a properly purchased wine that cost “x” dollars, and five years later it is worth “3x” dollars, you can sell it at auction, or if you don’t really like it that much, trade it to a fellow collector for something you do like. You could also give it to a “use-related” charity and possibly write off the market value rather than just your cost (discuss with your CPA).
Finally, in deciding just how large a unit to purchase, remember two important items:
1—If you bought a 15-foot ski boat once and three months later wondered why you hadn’t bought a 19-foot boat, the same principle applies to wine units.
2—However, remember that wines purchased for consumption within several months don’t need cellaring. No need to take up valuable cellar space unless you want to serve a red a little cooler—then put it in the cellar the day before or the morning of the day you plan to serve it.
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