A few thoughts on cellaring

By Robert Mayne

You may be surprised to hear that more than 95 per cent of wine purchased from pubs and retailers is consumed within 24 hours of that purchase. It’s one of the reasons that in recent years Australian winemakers have been putting a lot of effort into making wines that are approachable when very young, most notably red wines.

Nevertheless, despite these consumption statistics, some people still keep cellars going.

Some people do it as an investment, others for pleasure, some because they’re hoarders and some of generous spirit for their children. So I thought with this issue of our wine offers, I’d put a few thoughts about how to cellar wines and whether it is worth doing so.

The first, most important and perhaps the most obvious thing to say is that temperature fluctuation is the enemy of wine. The more the temperature goes up and down, the worse the outcome for the wine. Eventually the cork will start to leak as the wine expands and contracts, and that’ll be the end of it. You need to store wine in a temperature stable environment, away from powerful light sources and free of vibration. Ideally that temperature should be between 5 - 15 degrees C, but fairly stable.

I always looks in horror at restaurants that store large quantities of wine on wall racks, as obviously the temperature inside the restaurant, especially if air conditioned, will vary greatly, especially between summer and winter. The atmosphere should be as dry as possible. I remember many years ago a pub in Paddington in Sydney managed to flood its basement, where they stored hundreds of cases of wine. The labels were mostly washed off by this so they had to have a “mystery sale” of the wine.

You should also have some expectation of how long you feel you should keep each wine. To generalise, most Australian wines costing more than $15 will cellar well for a few years, the reds usually longer than the whites. Good Australian Rieslings will cellar for many years. However it is important to sample a bottle or two as it is aging to see how things are going, and plan how you will drink the rest of it from that sampling.

Most Chardonnays will take some bottle age, the aim being to soften the acid without losing the fruit flavours. Some blends will age well. One example you occasionally strike are five or six year old Houghton White Burgundies, because their West Australian maker occasionally releases a batch of aged stock. The result is a honey coloured wine with pleasing, broad and soft fruit flavours.

One wine which simply requires some bottle age is Hunter Semillon, which change quite dramatically (for the better) after five or six years. One example of this is the generally widely available McWilliam’s Elizabeth Semillon, which is held back from sale by its maker for five years so it can develop those toasty, honeyed flavours of the aged wine.

I believe that, ideally, keeping a good bottle of Australian red for up to five years is about right. There will be exceptions to that but few Australian reds will be better for drinking after 8/10 years. The exceptions include the obvious, such as Penfolds Grange, Henschke’s Hill of Grace, Burge’s Mesach and some of the other great Southcorp wines such as Bins 389, 707, Wynn’s Coonawarra reds, Lindeman’s Coonawarra reds and so on. There are plenty of good reds from small makers which will stay the distance and the maker usually advises you on the back label of what he or she thinks is ideal.

Can you make money from cellaring? The answer is yes, but you have to be patient and have deep pockets. Plenty of people have made money out of Grange, but it’s getting hard now its retailing for around $ 500 a bottle. The trick is to spot up-and-comers and take a chance on them; after all, you can always drink the stuff yourself!

A few thoughts on cellaring

Recent Articles

Popular Articles

Email Address:

Password:

	Forgot password?