I have a bit of a crisis to manage relating to storage of my VP and would appreciate any advice on how best to deal with it.
I use 2 large electric wine cooler units to store my bottles at a constant 12 degrees. Apart from a few old oddities which will not be drunk (probably vinegar already!) I have a range of ports dating from 1960 to 2003. I am now at almost full capacity but have no space to put another wine cooler (yet!). I have more bottles due to arrive soon so therefore need to move some to another location in the house. I have a cupboard in the centre of the house that seems to have a fairly constant temperature but it will not be an ideal place by any means.
What I would like to know is which bottles it would be safest to store in this cupboard - young robust 2000 and 2003's or old mature bottles from the 1960's. I am already discounting anything that isn't fit to drink or anything that I plan to drink soon. These will all go in the cupboard. The ones I need advice on are those I plan to keep medium to long term that can no longer fit in the cooler.
The question is based on an assumption that VP of different maturities will have different levels of tollerance of non-ideal storage conditions. If this assumption is wrong then the question is probably irrelevant
Without knowing the annual temperature variance, I can not tell you if it is even safe to store ANY Vintage Port in that cupboard. Have you ever tested it during the summer months?
I suggest that if you can afford it, put your 2000 and 2003 Port holdings in an offsite storage facility. Along with a friend, I have my Ports stored there in London in a great place that is temp. controlled and holds the Port in bond if you so choose. I know there are quite a few good facilities around the UK that offer this service and at least you would not be risking the provenance of the young VPs and of course, that is practically the BEST reason for buying the Ports when young ... so you are guaranteed of great bottles later in life.
The older bottles would be even more susceptible to temperature changes, although 1960s vintages are not what I consider "old" in terms of being fragile. Port is a hearty breed and can take slightly more abuse than other wines. But you should consider that no matter what you store above cellar temperature, the bottles will ultimately age faster and exponentially so for young VPs if done for the long term (5+ years would have a dramatic effect on the drinking window if stored at 65+ degrees F). There have been studies done on this very topic (although not with Port). I believe, PhD Richard M. Gold's book "How and Why to Build a Wine Cellar" addresses this very issue.
Again, your best bet it to lease space off-premise at a professional facility.
I totally agree with Roy - offsite storage is your best option for overcoming your problem in both the short and long term. I only use my wine cabinet for storing bottles I delude myself that I will be drinking soon. Full cases or full half cases go into storage.
I use Berry Brother's warehouse in Basingstoke as it is close enough to me that I can call them in the morning and collect my wine in the afternoon. It costs me £6 (or is it £7?) a year per case to store with them and I am able (and do) store wine in bond until I want to drink it.
There are loads of other companies with good reputations who will also store for you - Octavian, for example - but look at storing "through" an intermediary as one of the conversations I had at the offline in November pretty quickly led to the realisation that two of the folks there were storing in the same hole in the ground but one was storing direct and was paying about 50% more than the person storing through their local wine merchant.
Of course, there are other solutions. My ambition is to have a spiral cellar put into our next house so that I can lock myself away in it and stroke all my bottles of wine, give them all names, pet them gently etc etc.
If that doesn't happen, there is always the option of being able to convert one of the bedrooms into a temperature controlled storage facility.
But short term, take some of those full cases or full half cases and get them stored offsite. Let us know if you want help finding someone who can do this for you close to where you live - maybe start a new thread on the topic.
I'm not familiar with the term as it applies to wine, so forgive my ignorance... What would be the advantage to storing your wine in bond as opposed to not?
"In Bond" is a UK term which means you ca store your wine in a secure facility and only pay the tax, which in the UK is VAT @ 17.5% of purchase price and Duty @ £20 per case of 12 bottles, when you want to take delivery.
This means that if you buy a case for £100 excluding tax and you keep it In Bond for 30 years, you still only need to pay the prevailing rate of VAT on the orignial price even though you case me be worth 3 or 4 times more than it did originally.
Alex/Roy,
Thanks for the advice. To be honest, I don't have enough to justify shipping it off to some deep hole in the ground. Perhaps my best option is to drink faster to limit the damage to what I have in the cupboard and when I buy anything new just leave it where it is until I have the space to take delivery of it.
Alex,
I also like the idea of the spiral cellar - have you investigated the cost? I think if I suggest to Jo that I want to turn a room in the house into a walk-in wine fridge she will probably expect me to live in it with my Port :?
Derek don't laugh. In my neck of the woods, even rich people don't buy air conditioners as it normally does not get that warm up her in the Pacific Northwest (just below Canada) and tempered by the Pacific Ocean and lots of large rivers and lakes. But two summers ago it hit about 35 degrees C. and we were dying here. My wife, 1 year old (back then) and me, set up a mattress with winter blankets and slept in the wine cellar for almost a week.
By the way, they have small under counter 50 or 100 bottle units you can pick up pretty inexpensively. Is this an option for you?
Last suggestion would be to ask a friend who has a substantial temp. controlled cellar, to hold onto a few cases for you. Compensate 'em with a couple of very nice bottles. That is what I'd do in your shoes.
Spiral cellars start at around £5,000 and go up to about £20,000. It is nothing more sophisticated than a 3 metre diameter hole bored into the ground and then lined with insulation material, bottle racks and a spiral staircase put into the middle of a hole. You also get a trap door over the top. Cheap, simple and - provided there is a 3 metre spot in your house or garden free from services - easy to get installed.
More seriously, I would still recommend using an off-site store for your surplus bottles. I started with Berry Brothers with a single case, which they were happy to take from the boot of my car when I drove to their warehouse.
If you have a local wine merchant who you buy from or through, then talk to them about storing your wine for you. If you do go this route though, drop me a PM and I will tell you of the pitfalls that you need to work around - not difficult if you're prepared for them.
bridgema wrote:[...]If you have a local wine merchant who you buy from or through, then talk to them about storing your wine for you. If you do go this route though, drop me a PM and I will tell you of the pitfalls that you need to work around - not difficult if you're prepared for them.
Alex, everytime I tried to do this, I was always faced with the statement that they will only store wine bought from them, and whole (unmixed) cases. In fact, that's what is written in the BBR website. Is there a way around this? If you are a regular customer will they make an exception?
The comment on Berry's only storing whole, unmixed cases is still true - although the definition of a case also includes 6 bottle cases, which quite a lot of the port that I have been buying recently seems to be shipped in.
The condition that they would only store wine that was bought from them certainly used to be true. I thought I had read recently that this rule was now relaxed and that they would store wine for existing customers that had been purchased from other places. However, I may be wrong as it was a long time ago that I first started storing wine in Basingstoke and haven't really paid much attention to it since....except for adding more and more wine to my reserves!
Private Reserves which is part of Goehuis and Co charges a similar price to BBR and allows you to store cases which are not bought through them for an extra receiving fee of c. £3/case. I found them after Jancis Robinson recommended them (among others) in an article in a British wine magazine about a year ago. They also allow mixed cases as well as half cases. Storage is in Octavian in Wiltshire and so far I've found them very friendly and efficient. This may be worth investigating. They hold just about all my port!
I've been thinking more about the problem you volunteered (remember - my name's Derek and I can't stop buying port...)
I've kind of decided to give in gracefully and admit that I will probably continue to buy more than I drink for many years to come so I have opened up an offsite storage account with Private Reserves, as Justin recommended. I spoke to a number of alternative storage companies and Private Reserves were amongst the most helpful and most reasonably priced. They store at Octavian in Wiltshire but will organise collection and delivery from home/work. I have 4 cases that I will drop off with them over the next few weeks.
I also found Lay & Wheeler (http://www.laywheeler.com) operate a storage service based around a warehouse located in Derby (and operated by London City Bond http://www.lcb.co.uk). If you wanted somewhere you could (with a bit of effort) travel to and from in order to make personal deliveries or collections then they may be more suitable for you.
But, if you are managing to keep up with drinking what you buy, then you won't need to look at outside storage options. On the other hand, when the cupboard is full and you have boxes stacked in the hallway.....
to limit the damage to what I have in the cupboard and when I buy anything new just leave it where it is until I have the space to take delivery of it.