Another Storage Question

Hi all!

I have recently gone further down the wine rabbit hole and I would like to start picking up higher end bottles to age for 5-20 years depending on the bottle.

I am completely torn and clueless on stand alone wine cellars (the electric kind)/(not coolers, but the nice ones with temp and humidity control). Will these age a wine long term as well as a home made cellar? Which ones should I be looking at?

I would much rather have a cellar where I could display the bottles, but at this time in my current house that is not possible.

Thank you in advanced!

Cam

As an extension of the main question - My house is 70 degrees all year. If I store wine in the dark at this temperature with good humidity, how long do I have to drink them before I should worry?

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Hi Cam!

There’s a pretty extensive run-through on wine fridges here, and you’ll see a few names repeatedly come up in the discussion:

Wine Enthusiast has a good selection of wine fridges at different price points, so you can see what the price ranges are for various sizes.

I can’t tell you that a wine fridge is going to be better or worse than a formal wine cellar for aging wine - they are both cold temperature boxes at the end of the day, at different price points. If you had infinite time and money, you could run the experiment to compare the two, but if you’re like me, we’re just rolling the dice on our preferred method of storing our wine based on our personal limitations of money, space, time, etc.

As to your second question, similarly I don’t think that anyone is going to really know or be able to tell you that your wines can only last XYZ period of time at 70 degrees. It sounds like your temperature is consistent/constant, which is helpful (I wouldn’t want my wine exposed to dramatic fluctuations in temperature). Personally, if I wanted to age something for 5+ years, I would probably seek a colder solution than 70 degrees, not because the wines would necessarily go bad during that time, but because colder=longer preservation, and I’d want to give the wine the best shot at aging gracefully that I can. 70 degrees is probably going to be OK for stuff that you’ll be enjoying in the near term, but likely warmer than folks on this board would want for aging their prized bottles. I’m just speaking for what I would do, and I’d be OK with keeping wine that I intend to drink in the next year or two at 70 degrees, but probably wouldn’t push it much past that timeline.

Long story short, who knows? Do what you’re comfortable with and can afford, and at the end of the day, enjoy the wine!

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