AsiaLIFE

Ever thought of putting some bottles of red to one side, but didn’t know where to start? Darren Gall gives some advice on which wines to store and how to store them.

Market research recently discovered the average ageing time recommended by winemakers for their red wines was five years. Meanwhile, the average time between purchasing a bottle in a wine shop and consumption was a little under two hours. Today we want instant gratification. We have no time and little interest in building a collection of fine wines, laying them down and patiently waiting for them to mature. More is the pity, because while a number of new winemaking techniques and practices allow winemakers to ‘knock-the-rough-edges’ off full-bodied, young red wines, the intrinsic and alluring charms of aged wines require time and patience.

The rewards for such patience are obvious the minute you take your first sip of a grand old wine given time in the cellar. The harsh tannins have softened and resolved into the wine, the simple fruitiness has transformed into flavours of intriguing complexity, and the individual components (or instruments) making up the wines texture, flavour and structure have merged seamlessly into one.

However, not all wines are made or designed to improve with storage so how do you pick the right one? Correct storage will see wines improve over time in the cellar, but improper storage will ruin even the finest of wines, turning them into vinegar. These problems are amplified in tropical climates. With less reputable merchants and shippers, wines have often been ‘cooked’ or ‘spoiled’ even before they’ve made it into your cellar. Knowing how long to store wines can prove difficult. Some wine styles mature more quickly than others. The last thing anyone wants to do is select a wine for ageing, wait patiently for five or so years, then serve it with friends, only to find it has gone well past its best and tastes like something squeezed out of an old leather boot. Here are a few simple tips for getting the most out of your wine.

Know Your Grape

Different grapes make wines with different ageing profiles – most cabernet sauvignons will age for longer than most merlots. Most wines are designed to be consumed within a couple of years. In general, more expensive wines are usually designed to become better with age, while most inexpensive wines do not benefit from ageing. Full-bodied reds tend to be the wines made for ageing in the cellar. They are normally more robust than lighter bodied reds and white wines. While, some whites are made to age well, (eg, rieslings and semillons), big reds tend to be less temperamental.

Know Your Supplier

Know and trust your supplier’s methods of transport and storing of wines. If a wine is shipped in sea containers without insulation it can cook in transport. If it is not cleared quickly and sits on a tropical port baking in the sun for a few days before it is cleared, it’s cooked. If a wine is shipped from port to warehouse on the back of a truck that takes days to get to town in the midday sun, it’s cooked. Wines must be shipped in insulated containers, cleared quickly and trucked in insulated conditions preferably in the dead of night.

Know How To Store Your Wine

Wine should be kept at a constant 16 or 17 degrees Celsius with a relative humidity of 70 percent. Avoid ultra-violet light or direct sunlight, avoid vibration and, most importantly, avoid fluctuation in temperature. This, rather than storing the wine in a place that is a little too warm or too cold, normally kills a good wine. If the wine is bottled under cork, keep the wine on its side to keep the cork moist and prevent it from drying out. As wine bottles heat up and cool down the wine and the cork expand and contract. If corks dry out they contract. Both lead to premature oxidation of the wine, rendering it something close to vinegar. In Southeast Asia, I recommend a wine fridge or wine cabinet as the most reliable way to store wine. Make sure it has humidity control and a quiet motor that doesn’t vibrate. Also look at the optimum cellaring recommendations for the wine – either on the back label or in wine reviews. For Southeast Asia halve that number, such are the realities of reliable freight and storage here.

Suck It and See

Whatever else, do not hold on to your bottle so long that it turns bad on you. Wine reaches its peak, and then the flavours tend to diminish. Though, they will still be good, they may lose their greatness. Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately), the only way to really know when a wine is ready is to taste it. Buy a case, or at least a few bottles, of any wine you intend to cellar so that you may sample a few over time until the wine reaches full maturity. When a wine in your cellar reaches a likely age of drinkability, try a bottle. Depending on the results, either drink the other bottles or set a date in the future to try the next bottle. This approach will train you in how wines develop. Soon you will be able to judge for yourself how much longer a wine may need to mature.

Darren Gall is a 20-year veteran of the wine industry with experience from brand ambassador to winemaking and grape growing. He has worked in over 20 countries. You can contact him at: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it