There is definitely no vacuum whatsoever in the bottle. If there was, the wine would be boiling. However, research suggests that you are correct in that the cork should be moist even when keeping the bottle standing upright. However, there seems to be something else beyond that, since many bottles that have been lying horizontally seem to have more elastic corks than wines that have been kept for the same time standing vertically, resulting in tougher corks that have lost some of their elasticity. It might be that keeping the wine-side part moist isn’t enough.
TCA is still an issue. Some are more sensitive to it than others. When a wine is corked, it’s from TCA on the cork. Wouldn’t having the liquid in direct contact with an infected cork for a longer period of time make the taint worse? Let’s say two corks are lousy with TCA. One cork is used as a closure for a bottle of wine stored on its side (direct contact with liquid). The other is used as a closure for a bottle of wine stored standing up (no direct contact). We age both bottles for twenty years. Upon opening, shouldn’t we expect the former bottle to taste more “corked” than the latter? If not, why not?
Research tells that TCA can migrate from the cork to the wine from without any liquid contact, apparently thanks to the high humidity in the bottle. Furthermore, wine is going to slosh around in the bottle and most likely is kept horizontally in the winery and in the shop before arriving to you, so if the cork has TCA, the wine is already faulty at this point.
Cork is a natural product. Just like a piece of paper, a blade of grass or my elbow (also natural products), it “tastes” like something, even if subtly. If the two bottles of wine in #2 above weren’t lousy with TCA, shouldn’t we expect the former wine to have more imparted “cork” taste than the latter? It seems so. Maybe the taste adds to the complexity of the wine and that’s a feature and not a bug. But still, wine A has to taste corkier than wine B, right?
This is correct. Some research has been done on this subject and apparently corks do impart a little bit of taste to the wine. Furthermore, they also seem to “suck” some aromatics out from the wine as well. I remember reading that synthetic corks were like “aromatic sponges” and glass closure had least impact.
The surface area of the liquid exposed to air is larger in a bottle on its side than upright, right? If slow aging is the key, shouldn’t we optimize for the minimum air contact surface area possible, assuming there is at least some part oxygen in the air trapped in the bottle?
You are correct in that the surface is bigger when bottles are kept horizontally. However, this would be an issue only if there was constant exchange of O2 molecules. If you are going to keep the bottles for a long time in a cellar, the oxygen that is trapped in the bottle is going to get into the wine, no matter if you keep the wine standing up or lying on its side.
If you’re living in an earthquake zone, such as Greece, or Italy, or Southeastern France, then when the ground starts shaking, it seems like upright glass bottles would be at a much greater risk of falling and cracking.
I agree with this. There seems to be some moisture wicking from corks in contact with the liquid, and they remain more pliable. Otto and Larry both mention corks stored upright being more brittle, which would seem to relate to a much higher degree of compromised corks over time. Another consideration is cellar humidity. If your cellar is particularly humid this may not be an issue, but if it’s dry, or relatively dry part of the year for instance, they may dry out faster from the top if not in contact. Hard to imagine why one wouldn’t store bottles on their side.
Again, why would they dry out from the top, any more than the top would become damp from the bottom? That’s not how cork cells work. Imagine a bunch of balloons in a big tube standing up. You pop some of the balloons on the top and that has what effect on the balloons on the bottom? None. Same thing if you wet the balloons on the bottom. Those balloons are like cork cells.
The reason they use cork is because back in the 1600s there was no material that could be compressed, put into a bottle, and then spring back into shape. The tolerances of the bottles weren’t as accurate as they are today, and may have been off by a millimeter or more - I have no idea. But there was no other material available that had the properties of cork. The cork cells are like waxy little balloons filled with air. An ideal cork for a wine stopper should not allow communication from one end to the other. The communication is through channels between the cells, so the longer the cork, the less likely that there will be comunication.
Also, once cork is boiled, its permeability to gas is greatly reduced. So when cork is stripped from the trees, it’s stored in big slabs that are then boiled before the corks are punched out.
There are articles dating back to at least the 1880s regarding cork’s permeability to air. If pressure is applied, air can find its way from one side of a piece of cork to another, but in a wine cellar, there is no such pressure and the size of the cork is more substantial than that used in the trials.
Another way to look at it: If the outside (or middle, for that matter) of the cork needs moisture wicked out from inside the bottle to stay “good”, that’s a bad sign for the integrity of that cork. Can you imagine what the ullage of a bottle would be if that moisture was being wicked away over a decade or two?
I would argue that it’s much more common in wine to ignore or discount science when it disagrees with “conventional wisdom”. Storing bottles on their sides isn’t “evidence” of anything, it’s just conventional wisdom.
Cellars with flat walls constructed of stone and mortar date back to pre-Christian times, so the idea that most wine was stored in caves where it was easiest to carve a ledge is just fantasy.
Had you been drinking?
Yes, they will. You just need a flat surface on each layer and some frame to make sure the weight doesn’t force the bottles outwards. Have you ever seen wine glasses stacked high in a store like that?
It’s just a hunch, but I would guess that an upright bottle will support much more weight for its surface area than a bottle on its side. But this wouldn’t be as efficient space-wise as stacking them on their sides alternating nose in, nose out.
An important point!
You wonder how well the bottles stacked on their sides before bottle-making was industrialized and bottles were uniform in size and shape.
I have heard that champagne should be stored vertically and the carbonation helps keep the cork wet. I do not see there being any difference in the liquid surface when a wine has been sitting for a day, a week, a year. I think wines and bubbly will be fine vertical.
The issue is storage convenience. Horizontal storage of one of each bottle is much easier than vertical storage of one of each on the same depth shelf.
I have heard the same re champagne corks and cork elasticity but it is anecdotal and not scientifically tested to my knowledge. I do store a fair amount of bubbly standing up but mostly cuz it wont fit in racking and is awkwardly shaped to stack.
But there is, or at least must be, since according to the OP, “It’s a virtual vacuum in there”.
Sorry, just had to. You’re quite correct in this one. However, to my understanding, liquid can pass through the channels between the cork cells. Gases too, but I could imagine that a) since H20 molecule is noticeably smaller than an O2 molecule, it could pass through these channels much easier than oxygen; b) I could also imagine that a wet cork decreases the permeability of gases, so the more moist the cork is, the less there is going to be any oxygen ingress. I could imagine the cellar humidity having the greatest impact on the liquid egress rate through evaporation, but I’ve no idea what kind of - if any - impact there is keeping the bottle horizontal vs vertical.
Nice thread. I think there have been lots of good points raised, especially about “common knowledge”. But…
A few points on diffusion:
The fact that the headspace of a wine is at 99% humidity does not mean that the base of a cork in an upright bottle is kept as moist as one lying down. It is not, and that has serious implications for the cork, as Larry has alluded to earlier in this thread.***
Corks ARE permeable. With the exception of native metals, almost all natural substances are permeable (for what it’s worth, I used to study the permeability of rocks and I can tell you that those are much less permeable than cork but they are still permeable). Corks have low permeability, but both liquids and gases will pass through them over time. That is why headspace increases with age - and not just because of channelization due to shrinkage in the cork, though this does increase the rate of evaporation substantially.
Corks in a low humidity environment will dry out and shrink over time, creating gaps and channels that increase their permeability and thus increase the likelihood of oxidation. We’ve all seen this in badly stored bottles, right? Horribly shriveled top of the cork, saved in some (sadly rare) cases by a wet lower half of the cork that retained some structural integrity due to contact with the wine keeping it moist. That’s one of the reasons why the humidity of wine storage is important.
Combine 1, 2, and 3 and you have a sound rationale for keeping wines on their sides to keep corks moist. Having said all that, cork is much more resilient than we give it credit for, the permeability is low, and if your external environment is not too dry then having moisture enter the cork from the base is not as important. My estimation, based on corks I have seen in bottles of different ages, is that 5 or 10 years of upright storage is, in most situations, totally fine, maybe even more depending on the cork, but that when you start talking about multiple decades, you have more risk. This risk is alleviated if your storage conditions are good.
*** If anyone wants more nerdy details about why the base of the cork is not as moist in an upright bottle…essentially, the boundary condition of the diffusion problem is moved from the surface of the wine (in an upright bottle) to the surface of the cork (in a horizontal bottle), making the concentration gradient at the cork interface much larger, which substantially increases the diffusion rate of liquid into the cork (Fick’s first law: J =D*dc/dx). Since corks are permeable, this means more liquid will enter the base of the cork over time. All other things being equal, this would actually increase the rate at which the headspace increases compared to an upright bottle, but the drying out of cork in an an upright bottle makes it more likely that you will form shrinkage channels, which increases the diffusion rate by orders of magnitude and thus outpaces the evaporation rate in a horizontal bottle.
Try storing some wine long term standing up and you’ll see the corks dry out. I can’t argue the science but I’ve seen enough data with my own stuff not to let it happen anymore. I suppose it’s something one could do a scientific study on, but it would be better if the wineries mooted the need to care about the issue by switching to caps or Diam.
As for storage orientation, you could probably store an equal number of bottles either vertically or horizontally in a given space, but individual horizontal slots are by far the more convenient method if the wines aren’t all the same and you need to pull a certain bottle (without having to move many other bottles), plus bottles standing up are susceptible to falling over onto the floor. IMO, there’s no good efficiency argument for vertical storage, and the deeper the space the bigger pain in the ass.
What is considered long-term for the purposes of storage / corks drying out? I have some bottles I only want to age for 5-15 years, and I can’t see corks significantly drying out in that time if I store them standing up. Right now I have all my offsite bottles kept sideways, but it’s resulted in a pretty inefficient use of space I’m paying for.
I agree, and storing bottles vertically is hugely inconvenient when you have to get to bottles behind bottles, and the risk of bottles taking a tumble is greatly magnified.
