I recently moved from Minnesota to Florida. While in Minnesota I kept my wine in a Eurocave. At one time I had around 100 bottles in the Eurocave, but I had been planning this move for awhile, so I stopped buying and just started drinking. I lowered my collection down to 32 bottles. I’m currently renting a condo here in Florida for three months until I find a permanent home. My brother, who is still living in Minnesota, is shipping my wine to me via FedEx Air and it’s supposed to arrive on Wednesday.
My question is do you think it’s better to store my wine in my condo at 70-72 degrees, or in the refrigerator at 36 degrees for the three months I’ll be living here?
If you are trying to age them for more than 10-15 years, turn up the AC and try to keep them under 70. The Eurocave didn’t make the trip? Otherwise, drink-up, (in the next ten years). What I’ve seen, is the as long as you don’t get to cooking temperatures, the warmer a cellar past 55, the faster it ages.
Are you going to be drinking those 32 bottles during that 3 month stay? If not, why ship them, then store them sub-optimally, then move them again? Let them catch up to you when you settle in to a new place for a longer period of time.
Yeah I’ll be continuing to age them. I’ve already been aging some of them for close to 10 years. No, the Eurocave didn’t make the trip. I haven’t started looking at permanent places yet, but will soon. I’m not going to build, so hopefully I can find a place that at least has a Sub Zero wine fridge. If that’s the case, I’d be ok with paring down my collection to 50 or so and just keeping it around that number. However, the problem with the Sub Zero’s is, unless I’m mistaken, they aren’t humidity controlled. I moved to Naples and depending on my budget and what’s available, there might actually be some places that have relatively small actual cellars. That would be ideal, of course, but like I said, it all depends on what’s a available and how much I’m willing to spend. Plus, most likely I’m looking at getting a condo…not a house, so I’m guessing the chances of a condo in my price range having a cellar are pretty much nil.
Hey Chuck. No I won’t be drinking them. But my brother is also moving to Naples. I just left before he did. He stayed back in Minnesota to wrap up some things with his house and some other odds and ends. He’ll be coming down to Florida in a couple weeks most likely. I guess, in theory, he should have waited until the last day before he left to to ship the bottles to get the most out of my Eurocave, but it would have only been a couple weeks.
I doubt much harm would come to the wines in three months. It sounds like none of them are super delicate or near to OTH Def try to keep the temp under 70 F. And as stable a temp as possible. Longer term, storage at higher temp will age the wine faster (not necessarily a terrible thing) but I have read also that any fault may be exaggerated. Fridge will start drying out the corks. Keep it for food.
If it’s really staying 70-72, I would store that way. I’d be worried about full on refrigeration drying the corks over that much time, and I have stored wines and temperatures like that for 5+ years that have turned out well. If it actually got up to 78+ in the summer, That would be a different story.