Wine: is self storage the solution?
So you’ve got some wine you want to keep for a while — a case or three left over from a party, or a van-load from a booze cruise to the continent. Your home doesn’t have a cellar, and you know that wine doesn’t like the warm temperatures of domestic life.
So can you store your wine in a self storage unit?
The answer is yes, but…
Ideally, wine should be stored in a cool and constant temperature, with moderate humidity, in the dark. But what does that mean, exactly?
Cool and constant
The best temperature is 13°C (55°F). But actually wine can tolerate temperatures between 10°C (50°F) and 18°C (64°F), even as high as 21°C (69°F) — provided that the temperature is reasonably constant (e.g. does not fluctuate greatly between day and night). It will certainly spoil if left in a temperature above 25°C (77°F) for any length of time.
Many warehouse self storage facilities offer “climate-controlled” units, which keep temperatures broadly within this range. If in doubt, ask what their maximum temperature is, and if it exceeds 21°C (69°F), it is not suitable for wine. Units that are well within the building (away from external walls), and on a lower floor, or beneath the ground level, are likely to be the most suitable.
The question of humidity
The climate control of self storage facilities is primarily designed for the safe storage of items such as mattresses, clothes, leather furniture, musical instruments, books and archives. But climate control is not just a question temperature: it also involves humidity. Typically the humidity is kept at similar levels to a home, or drier: somewhere between 30% and 55%.
Some wine experts insist that wine should be stored at a humidity of about 60% to 75%. Less than this, and there is a danger that any natural corks will dry out and the wine will spoil. A humidity greater than this level may well result in mould-damage to the labels.
But not everyone agrees with this. Some wine experts say that humidity is not a big issue for wine — and that all the humidity a cork needs is in the bottle!
In any case, the question of humidity only arises when you want to store wine with proper, natural corks, and for a fairly long time (a year or more). Wine bottles with synthetic corks or screw caps will not be affected.
For these same reasons, bottles with natural corks should be stored on their sides, to prevent the cork from drying out and letting in air. Bottles with synthetic corks or screw caps can be stored on their sides or standing up — as, indeed, can champagne.
Let there not be light!
Wine needs to be stored in the dark. Over time, it is spoiled by exposure to the light, whether natural or artificial (that is why red wine, in particular, comes in dark-glass bottles).
Light is unlikely to be a problem in any purpose-built self storage warehouse facility. In addition, you are probably going to be storing your wine in cardboard or wooden boxes.
No to container storage or lock-ups!
All the above should be telling you that you should NOT attempt to store wine in a container storage facility (i.e. one that uses shipping containers as storage units), or in a garage lock-up. Both of these are vulnerable to severe fluctuations in temperature, and to damp.
Instead, you should be looking for self storage in a purpose-built warehouse facility.
Tailor-made
And, best of all, you may find yourself close to a self storage facility with units designed and built specially for wine collections — with finely-tuned climate control in both temperature and humidity. The first with a specialist wine facility to open in the UK was the Big Yellow branch in Fulham, London, which has 500 units of varying sizes to suit all wine enthusiasts, and even wine traders.
Of course, there are wine merchants who can offer cellarage facilities with very similar conditions. But self storage has the advantage of easy personal access (at the Big Yellow in Fulham, this is 5am to 11pm daily), and this means you can save on transport and other staffing costs associated with cellarage.
Other self storage companies may follow suit, seeing the market for secure, controlled wine storage. Wine collections are often highly personal treasures, representing both financial and emotional investment: they need careful and sensitive handling. Tailor-made self storage for wine is best, but general warehouse self storage is often perfectly adequate for the purpose.
3 Responses to “Wine: is self storage the solution?”
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Really serious collectors of wine may require specialist wine storage facilities, dedicated to doing that, and that alone. One of these is the Octavian Vaults at Corsham, Wiltshire, an underground stone quarry and a munitions dump in earlier incarnations, and now custodian to some 5 million bottles. This recent article in the Guardian tells more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2010/may/06/wine-vault-octavian-corsham-cellars
Wine cabinets are generally absolutely essential if you want to store your wines correctly and also they are the last word in convenience and also productivity. These cabinets are specially designed to house wine collections and also the current market is actually replete with versions of different sizes and styles. Some cabinets are generally power as well as come with cooling things that take the hassle out of storing wine.
I think that you may be interested in my experience with my Eurocave model E264 cabinet. This is cabinet that stores around 180 bottles and is installed in my holiday home in France located in the southern Cote du Rhone wine region.
I returned to my house earlier this year to discover that my wine cabinet temperature was higher than it should have been and I soon realised that the cooling (refrigerant) part of the system was not working. I braced myself for a call out charge from Eurocave and attempted to get the unit repaired.
My first experience was that it is not easy to get in contact with Eurocave. The Eurocave office in Avignon where I had purchased the cabinet six years previously had closed. The Eurocave web site offers no means to contact Eurocave directly and the nearest distributor who might help was in Marseille approximately 100 miles from my house.
The distributor in Marseille was duly contacted and arrangements made for my unit to be repaired. I was informed that a repair was not possible at my house and that the cabinet would have to be taken back to Marseille. The cabinet is very large, heavy, is located in a cellar and the village where I have my house is a village perché. The original delivery was by Eurocave and required two very fit young men to affect the delivery.
So in anticipation of such an expense I waited for the distributor from Marseille to go about the business of repairing the cabinet. However when the lone technician duly arrive (how was he going to remove such a large cabinet by himself?) he examined the unit and announced that it was not repairable. The explanation was that there was a refrigerant leak within the walls of the cabinet that simply could not be accessed. However I was not to worry, the distributor would make a very generous offer for a replacement unit and I was to wait for this.
Now my Eurocave cabinet cost 2,400 euros. It has never moved from the original location where Eurcoave set it down when they delivered it. Physically and visually it is in pristine condition. The replacement offer when it arrived was for an inferior model at a cost of 1590 euros. Of all of my household appliances both in London and in France, I consider my dishwasher and washing machines to be the most complex with a finite life. Refrigerators and freezers are the least complex and I have never had to replace one of these through failure in over 40 years of married life. A call out charge for an appliance repair is never cheap and can easily approach £80 to 100 plus the cost of parts. Always in my experience these have been repairable at my house. I had been bracing myself for a charge of around 250 euros so the distributor’s proposal left me in some shock.
At that point in the proceedings I had to return to London and picked up started to pursue the case from there. I contacted Eurocave’s London distributor to try and add to my understanding of what the problem is and how they might tackle it. I am an engineer, so am quite able to discuss intelligently the technical issues involved. They were very helpful and provided me with a Customer Services email address with which to contact Eurocave in France and informed me that communication could be in English (eurosav@eurocav-support.com).
Eurocave was duly contacted and they responded that they would investigate. My hopes soared!
However after a reasonable exchange of emails when I provided more information a second offer was made for a replacement unit of similar specification to the original (good) but at a delivered cost of 1,500 euros (not good).
Some explanation of the problem has been provided along the lines of a “missing chock” though they have been unable to tell what this “chock” is and “According to the technician, there an important damage at the back of the unit that provocate the bent of pipes and create a hole in the evaporator that cause internal leak”.
Reading this you might think that the unit is a physical wreck. I myself cannot see any physical damage whatsoever. As I have mentioned earlier, the unit has never moved since delivery by Eurocave and its appearance is perfect.
I am not attracted to buying a new Eurocave cabinet. I consider it a clear design deficiency that the cabinet cannot be repaired. If Eurocave have made a commercial decision not to design the unit so as not to allow repairs because such a repair is such an unlikely occurrence, then they should also be prepared to offer a replacement unit at a cost of what a repair might reasonably have been. With respect to this I have made an offer of 500 euros, twice the amount I originally expected, but Eurocave have declined to accept this.
An so there the matter stands at present. I will keep you informed if there are any significant developments. In the meantime my wine collection has to survive without the benefit of a cabinet.