This is one for me: As Roy already has noticed I'm full of questions.
For instance: how do you keep your VP's well over 30 year or more?
I myself do have a small cellar where they lay down in their own closed cases.
The temperature varies from about 10-12 degrees Celcius in wintertime to max. 18-20 degrees Celsius in the summer.
Lately I've read somewhere that you should not keep them in the wooden cases, but just in the open air. Do you agree on that?
Also does this (slight?) variation of temperature influences the maturity of the VP's?
How do you store your ports?
Thank you for your answers.
Hi Monique, your conditions seems ok for me. I can add that the humidity level needs to be at least 60%, some would say more...
The temperature variation is fine as long as it is not drasting and it vary slowly with the season.
I don't think wooden case is that innapropriate, I could only lower the humidity in the cellar by absorbing it? Many great cellars store wine in the wooden case as it take also more value when sold intact to the auction.
For myself I have a Cavavin appartment cellar but I'm running out of space so I found a place in a corner of my house having the same conditions as yours.
Living the dream and now working for a Port company
I don't think that having wine stored in the OWC (original wooden case) is an issue at all. In fact, I unearthed a couple of cases of nearly 70 year old VP that was in perfect condition, because it WAS in the OWCs. The bottles were in pristine condition even though they had been kept all that time in a passive cellar, underground. These Ports were stellar.
In my own home cellar, I keep most of the older bottles in racks, and lots of younger stuff on top of my racking in open topped wooden cases, so the access is easy.
Agree with Roy that how the bottles are contained (OWC, cardboard wine box, open racks, etc.) doesn't much matter. But I will say that I believe if you want a Port (or any wine for that matter) to age ideally upwards of 30 years, it should probably be stored in a place that doesn't see quite such warm temperatures as 20 Deg on a regular basis. Although there has recently been some discussion that the temp range you describe is not unlike some of the best Bordeaux producer cellars, and I wonder if some of the Port producers have similar conditions. Roy?
Temperature and wine is one of those things where there are lots of strongly held opinions, but little scientific fact. As a chemist, I wish there were better than just the empirical and anecdotal evidence we have. Shooting from the hip, I would say that if your cellar tends to max out at 20 in the summer, for a few hours during each day, or for a few weeks each summer, I wouldn't worry too much. If I had passive basement cellar like that, I'd be quite happy for the majority of my wines, which I plan to drink within a decade. You might consider getting a small cooler to hold the bottles you know you want to age for decades, just for a little insurance. If you do, don't just put it in your passive cellar without routing the exhaust to the outside somehow - that would partly defeat the purpose, by generating more heat in the rest of your cellar.
I'm full of questions.