First, you have a cheap thermostat in that uline. A good (more sensitive) thermostat would turn on and off with less of a temperature swing. That said, your range will not damage the wine. In addition, even fairly large daily temp swings will not damage a wine, UNLESS it is so large to cause the cork to ‘piston’ (move up and down, letting in air). A few degrees of change for a liquid is not enough to do that. Finally, yes, sunlight can damage the wine, but only DIRECT sunlight ( it has UV waves). Indirect sun will of course warm your room and cause the fridge to run more often. If you are concerned or are getting direct sunlight, tape a black plastic sheer inside the glass door (don’t have it touch the door seals). But no, your fridge is not ruining your wine.
It was my understanding that frequent temperature change is not good for wines. Especially if it is fluctuating 11-12 degrees. It is probably changing temp every 30 mins or so.
That doesn’t mean the wine is fluctuating in temperature. You can take a full bottle of milk out of your fridge and put it on the counter. That’s a thirty degree temperature difference or more. Doesn’t mean your milk suddenly heats up. Same with the wine. It’s not changing temperature much at all.
Moreover, even if it were changing temp, that small fluctuation is not going to ruin the wine.
Sunlight and even home lights can damage wines from what I read but I don’t think they can damage your wines this fast? Are they getting a lot of light?
Someone needs to find better reading material! Don’t worry about the light. Nothing is happening to the wine because of it. Ever go into a wine store?
For the OP - Just for peace of mind, I’d take the temperature of the wine with an accurate thermometer. You said you’re using two - do you know that they’re accurate? Next time you open a bottle, measure the temp of the wine itself, not the surface of the bottle or the air in the cooler. Your cooler’s thermostat might be inaccurate, but even if it is, if your wine is at a safe temp, I wouldn’t worry. That fluctuation in temp is due to the poor insulation of the unit, but it’s nothing much to worry about.
And I’m almost certain that the cooler has nothing to do with the taste sensations you’re getting, unless it’s actually boiling the wine or something weird. One thing you may try to do is to take a bottle out of the cooler, go buy a bottle of the same wine, and have your wife or someone else pour them into separate glasses for you while you’re in another room. You’ll try to see if you can distinguish between them. Then do it for her. Make sure the wine in both glasses is at the same temp.
Finally, it has to be said, but not much is going to improve the Prisoner. The good news is that on the other hand, not much is going to ruin it. That’s an industrial wine, built to withstand plenty of abuse.
Best of luck!
Vinegar is not a flavor that results from bad storage.
My Uline 50 bottle wine cooler was purchased in 1992 and holds a near constant temperature of 54 degrees. Bottles coming out of it need about 15 to 20 minutes to warm up to drinking temperature but interestingly we occasionally put a chiller on bottles we bring home to cool them down around 60 degrees so they taste right.
The only way the wine is turning to vinegar would be if the unit is cooking the wine and the corks have dried because of the heat. Not likely.
Any mold in the unit?
How old is the unit?
Do you decant the wines? (We’ve had wines we thought were bad upon opening but after a decant they were fine.)
If you can’t find the answer quick, buy a 52 bottle unit offered for $399.00 at Lowes and Costco. You can replace it three times and not spend as much as you did on the Uline.
The speed of deterioration is really striking. Absent extreme heat, which apparently isn’t happening, I don’t even see poor storage doing that. I assume you use the same stemware decanter etc for the ‘fresh’ wines that taste ok?
If you have $400 lying around replacing the unit cant do any harm (don’t throw it out in case it is good and then you have a spare) but I would be looking for other causes than the cooler itself.
The most likely explanation is that your palates are improving [now that you’re getting more serious about wine], and the colder temperature is simply revealing to you the bare-nekkid truth about the kinds of wines you once enjoyed.
As a test, buy another “fresh” bottle from the store, chill it in the refrigerator [not the cooler], and then taste it blind against an identical wine pulled from the cooler.
[For a blind tasting:
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You take four wine glasses, and label two of them as #1, and two of them as #2.
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Your wife leaves the room.
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You take a magic marker and mark the label of each bottle as to its origin: Cooler or Kitchen Fridge.
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You open both bottles, and remove all of the tin foil from them.
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You take some tall slender package-store brown bags, wrap them around the bottles, and secure the bags with some tape around the necks of the bottles.
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You spin the two bagged bottles around the kitchen counter-top until you forget which one was which.
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You leave the room.
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Your wife enters the room.
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Your wife spins the two bagged bottles around the kitchen counter-top until she forgets which one was which.
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Your wife takes the magic market and marks one bag as #1 and the other bag as #2.
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You come back in the room, y’all pour the #1 bagged bottle in the glasses marked #1, and the #2 bagged bottle in the glasses marked #2, and you proceed to enjoy [or not enjoy] the wines with dinner.
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At the end of the evening, you pull off the bags and learn which bottle was which.
You forgot the pinata
I would want to understand what is causing the temperature to fluctuate 12 degrees in 2 hours. Something doesn’t seem right. Forget the wine for a moment.
If your compressor runs and gets the internal cabinet temp down to 47 degrees, what are the external conditions that would somehow cause the temperature to rise to 59 in 2 hours? That would seem to me the cabinet is probably getting pounded with direct sunlight / heat and possibly does not have a great seal as well. That’s way too quick to rise 12 degrees unless it’s in a really hot room and getting heated somehow, most likely by sunlight.
Now, is all that sunlight ruining your wine? Unlikely. But if you do end up trying different things, I would move your wine cabinet to a different location in the house.
Are the wines being stored on their sides or standing up. If standing up, are the corks drying out?
I echo others in making sure you give time for the wines to warm up.
Use a good quality instant read thermometer and make sure bottles are from the same source.
I don’t think that’s correct. Acetobacteria multiply as temperature rises. That’s why I always refrigerate leftovers. if I leave a wine out, I often pick up some VA the next day, which I rarely do if it’s refrigerated.
There’s no way the temp should fluctuate that much, or that rapidly. The thermostat must be shot. Even a cheap coller should keep the air in a much narrower range. (My ancient, cheap Marvel cooler stays within a degree or two, even though the refrigerant needs a recharge.)
I doubt there would be any damage from that temp variation with wines like the Prisoner. But this means you compressor will be running for longer stretches, which means long stretches of vibration. And if the thermostat is sending the air temp down to 47, it’s running too much. So there might be a vibration issue.
By the way, is the 59 measured with the door open? If so, ignore that. When you shut the door, the air will quickly cool down due to the thermal mass of the wine and the compressor kicking in.
Wine does not need to be in direct sunlight to get light strike, wine in a clear bottle left in a window in daylight for a few hours will be affected. But wine in brown bottles, kept in a shady place, will survive longer. If you buy wine from a shop shelf, it is well worth considering the possibility of light strike.
Regarding how quickly wine temps change… If a wine is at 59, and the air temperature SUDDENLY changes to 47, it will take around 2 hrs for the wine to get down to 53 - obviously longer for a slower cooling of air temperature. You can check out other scenarios here:
Regardless, I don’t see how either of these scenarios would make a wine taste of vinegar.
But how does the bacteria get in at all? If the wine has been open for a while, possibly via a fruit fly. But not through a cork, I don’t think. I presume you are not thinking of natural wines…?
Maybe too simple but is there any chance OP is tasting wines at a cooler temp from the wine fridge and warmer from the store? While this would not explain any vinegar flavors I’m just tossing out a super basic thing that would make a dramatic tasting difference.
Are all of the wines that now taste bad from the same store? Could be that the wines were mishandled by the store and were already starting to turn. Apart from that, more investigation is needed to isolate the variables.
Where is the cooler located? It’s not next to an oven or dishwasher is it?
Lots of wine have some acetobacteria and some VA already. Unless it’s pasteurized or microfiltered, wine isn’t sterile when it goes into the bottle. That’s why brett (a yeast, not a bacteria) also can multiply in the bottle.
Even in those locations, a functioning thermostat should keep the temp in a much narrower range.
Everytime I see the subject heading of this thread, I think: Bartle and Jaymes?
